Dr. Gibson earned his BS, MS, and MD degrees at the University of Chicago, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha and was a starting college football halfback.

He did his internship, residency, and chief residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and his cardiology fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, both at Harvard Medical School.

Gibson is an interventional cardiologist who has held numerous senior leadership positions in academic medicine, including Director of the Coronary Care Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Chief of Cardiology at the West Roxbury VA (all Harvard Medical School affiliates), Associate Chief of Cardiology at both Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and UCSF, and was a Vice Chairman of Medicine at Allegheny General Hospital, which has a staff of more than 1,000 physicians. For many years he has been recognized as one of Boston’s Top Doctors, and U.S. News & World Report has listed him among America’s Top Doctors.

In research, Dr. Gibson has been a leader in thrombosis, atherosclerosis, acute coronary syndromes, atrial fibrillation, cardiovascular devices, implantable monitors, and artificial intelligence. In 1987 he founded the Academic Research Organization PERFUSE, which served as the TIMI angiographic and EKG core laboratory. During this early work, he invented the TIMI Frame Count and the TIMI Myocardial Perfusion Grade, measures of coronary blood flow now used worldwide which advanced our understanding of the open artery and open microvasculature hypotheses in myocardial infarction.  He was a leader of the National Registry of Myocardial Infarction (NRMI) which enrolled 1.3 million patients over 15 years in over 2,000 hospitals. The registry established the 90 minute door to balloon time and Gibson’s 2008 paper showed that the NRMI effort led to a reduction in door to balloon times from 111 minutes to 79 minutes with a decline in mortality from 8.6% to 3.1% (P < .001).

Dr. Gibson was one of the first two full-time physicians to join Eugene Braunwald in the TIMI Study Group. He founded the TIMI Data Coordinating Center and led the analysis of the first 50 TIMI trials while serving as a Senior Investigator in the group. In 2000, he helped found the Harvard Clinical Research Institute and served as its founding Chief Academic Officer. In 2017, he became CEO of the former Harvard Clinical Research Institute, now known as the Baim Institute, which over the years has conducted more than 1,250 clinical trials, published over 5,500 peer-reviewed manuscripts including 144 in The New England Journal of Medicine, and supported more than 100 FDA submissions across a global network of 26,000 sites in 57 countries. The institute currently manages approximately 300,000 patients across 125 active trials. It is a non-profit organization run by healthcare professionals.

Since 2014, Dr. Gibson has been consistently ranked by Thomson Reuters as one of the world’s most highly cited scientists across all fields. He has led phase 1 through phase 4 clinical trials, including large-scale cardiovascular trials enrolling more than 34,000 patients, contributing to the international approval of numerous drugs and devices, including implantable technologies that alert patients to myocardial infarction.

His clinical trial leadership includes landmark studies of fibrinolytics such as Tenecteplase (cared for the first patient dosed), retaplase, and APSAC; antiplatelet agents including aspirin, clopidogrel, prasugrel, ticagrelor, elinogrel and cangrelor; the PAR 1 inhibitor vorapaxar; glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors including eptifibatide, tirofiban, and abciximab; and anticoagulants including enoxaparin, betrixaban, bivalirudin, rivaroxaban, apixaban, and edoxaban. He has also led pivotal trials of reversal agents such as Andexanet alfa and CytoSorb, and spearheaded early intracoronary pharmacologic therapies of Integrilin, bivalirudin, abciximab and verapamil.

Dr. Gibson and his team are currently operationalizing large-scale global trials of milvexian, a factor XI inhibitor, across acute coronary syndromes, atrial fibrillation, and stroke, involving approximately 50,000 patients. He is also leading the Heartline Trial, the first large randomized fully virtual cardiovascular outcomes trial, enrolling 34,000 patients and leveraging smartphone technology and wearable devices to detect atrial fibrillation at approximately three percent of the traditional trial cost. Results will be presented in the fall of 2026. Most recently, he led the AEGIS-II trial evaluating apoA-I infusion therapy in 18,200 patients following myocardial infarction.

In education, Dr. Gibson founded WikiDoc.org and WikiPatient.org more than 20 years ago, creating a free, open source, copyleft medical and patient textbook now viewed approximately one billion times annually. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of more than 2,200 active contributors who have authored and edited over 100,000 chapters millions of times.

In communication and public engagement, Dr. Gibson founded ClinicalTrialResults.org in 1999 and has conducted more than 2,700 television and video interviews. He has served as Chief Medical Correspondent for the American College of Cardiology and as a social media correspondent for the American Medical Association. With more than 430,000 social media followers, he has been ranked in peer-reviewed literature as the number one influencer in cardiology. He is currently launching TribeMD and the Cred platform to combat medical misinformation and promote evidence-based medicine.

Dr. Gibson is an at-large member of the FDA Cardiorenal Advisory Panel, having previously served as a standing member from 2017 to 2021.

In addition to his medical career, he is an accomplished artist whose work is held in numerous collections and has been featured in The Los Angeles Times.