Endowed Lectureship

Joe K. Bissett, M.D.

Dr. Joe K. Bissett is a Professor of Internal Medicine in the UAMS College of Medicine. He holds joint appointments at UAMS and at Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System where he practices cardiology. Dr. Bissett was a National Merit Scholar and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville where he was a Razorback tennis player. He graduated with a B.A. in 1961 and then enrolled in medical school at UAMS in Little Rock. He graduated from medical school in 1965 and trained as a resident in internal medicine at both UAMS and at State University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City, Iowa until 1969. He trained as a fellow in the Division of Cardiology in Iowa City from 1969-1971. He joined the UAMS Department of Medicine as Assistant Professor and became a staff physician at CAVHS in 1971.

Dr. Bissett was instrumental in establishing the UAMS interventional fellowship program in 1999  and the UAMS electrophysiology fellowship program in 2006. Dr. Bissett has trained more Arkansas cardiologists than anyone in the history of the state. He has had a major influence on shaping cardiovascular care throughout Arkansas.

Professor James Robert Bissett, Dr. Joe Bissett’s father, taught civil engineering from 1946 to 1972 at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Through the generosity of one of his favorite students, Randy McNulty, the founder and chairman of Southern Pavers, Inc., the Joe K. Bissett Lectureship was established.

Randy McNulty

After obtaining his degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Arkansas, Randy McNulty built roads, bridges, and airports throughout Arkansas. His company built some of the most challenging highway projects, many earning bonuses for early completion. He was inducted into the Arkansas Construction Hall of Fame, Arkansas Academy of Civil Engineering, and served four terms (20 years) on the Contractors Licensing Board. After selling his business, he continues serving as a construction arbitrator.

In addition to being passionate about the construction industry, McNulty is also passionate about cardiovascular medicine. As a result of his family’s medical history and because of his great respect for the Bissett family, in 2010 he established an endowment for a distinguished lectureship at UAMS in the field of cardiology.

The Joe Knight Bissett, M.D. Lectureship in Cardiovascular Disease honors McNulty’s lifelong friend, Joe Knight Bissett, M.D., and is in memory of Dr. Bissett’s father, James Robert Bissett, McNulty’s esteemed professor of engineering at the University of Arkansas who became his close friend and mentor. This lectureship is the first to honor a faculty member in the Division of Cardiology at UAMS and annually features renowned experts in the field of cardiology and cardiovascular disease.

William W. O’Neill, M.D.

William W. O’Neill, M.D., is an internationally recognized leader in Interventional Cardiology and Structural Heart Disease, as well as a pioneer in research and new techniques to diagnose and treat heart disease.

O’Neill is one of the few Master Fellows out of 4,500 worldwide members of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (MSCAI), the professional medical society for invasive and interventional cardiologists. He pioneered the use of angioplasty for treatment of heart attacks, which is now the mainstay therapy throughout the world. He has been working on new catheter-based treatments of structural heart disease and performed the first Transvaal aortic valve replacement (TAVR) through a catheter in the U.S. in 2005. Currently he is organizing new protocols to treat cardiogenic shock, a deadly side effect of massive heart attacks. The Detroit Cardiogenic Shock Initiative increases patient survival rate from 50% to 76%.

A leader in academic and teaching hospitals for nearly 30 years, and to date, an author of more than 450 peer-reviewed articles and abstracts published in medical literature, O’Neill has written multiple book chapters and edited one of the first textbooks in the field of interventional cardiology. He was a founding member of the American Board of Internal Medicine interventional cardiology board, which certifies all interventional cardiologists.

He has received multiple awards and recognitions in his career, including America’s Top Doctors, Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Seymour Gordon Award for Distinguished Achievement by the Michigan chapter of the American Heart Association. He was also the founding chair of the American College of Cardiology’s Innovation in Intervention Summit.

He is the former executive dean for Research, Research Training and Innovative Medicine, and chief executive officer for Research at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Previous positions include corporate chief of cardiology at William Beaumont Hospital, as well as director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory and associate professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Hospital.

A graduate of Wayne State University School of Medicine, where he was a resident, O’Neill completed a cardiology fellowship at the University of Michigan Hospital.