Mary Sheppard is a cardiac pathologist with a national and international reputation. She is head of the Cardiovascular Pathology Unit at St George’s Medical School, a unique academic centre within the UK funded by the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY). She is also an honorary Professor of Cardiovascular Pathology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. She earned her BSc in Pathology and an MD in Pathology at the University College Cork National University of Ireland. Her main area of interest is the cardiac conditions that cause sudden death in young people which are mainly inherited, such as sudden arrhythmic death, cardiomyopathies including dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, and idiopathic hypertrophy.