Christopher K. Zarins (born on 2 December 1943 in Tukums, Latvia) is an American-Latvian surgeon and professor emeritus who specializes in vascular biology and pathology.
[1] Zarins was born during the Second World War in 1943 in the family of Tukums Lutheran pastor Rihards Zariņš (1913–2006) and English teacher Maria Zarinš.
In 1993, he moved to California where he began working as a vascular surgeon at Stanford University Medical Center.
Zarins is an author or co-author of more than 15 books and more than 350 scientific articles in the fields of vascular biomechanics and pathobiology of atherosclerosis, carotid stenosis, aortic aneurysms and endovascular therapy.
[4][5] In 2007, Zarins together with biomedical engineer Charles Anthony Taylor founded HeartFlow, Inc., a medical technology company based in Redwood City, California, that developed non-invasive, real-time virtual modeling tool for coronary artery disease (CAD) intervention using estimation of fractional flow reserve (FFR).