My entire professional career been spent in academic surgery.  After graduating from the University of Manitoba School of Medicine in Winnipeg, Canada, I completed residency training in General Surgery at the University of Manitoba.  I then spent two years in the Surgical Research Laboratory of Dr. Andrew Wechsler at Duke University studying myocardial metabolism and the biochemistry of myocardial protection, working under a research fellowship awarded by the Canadian Heart Foundation.  In 1988 I was invited to join the Residency Program in Thoracic Surgery at Duke University Medical Center and trained there under the direction of Dr. David C. Sabiston, Jr., finishing in 1990.  I then joined the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where I remain today as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, and holder of the Frank M. Ryburn, Jr. Distinguished Chair in Cardiothoracic Surgery and Transplantation.  I direct an active basic research laboratory that has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Texas Advanced Technology Program.  My research examines myocardial metabolism, the effects of cardiopulmonary bypass and a novel technique for long-term cardiac preservation for transplantation. This work has yielded a broad array of publications in the literature and in 1994 I received the Lyndon Baines Johnson Research Award of the Texas Affiliate of the American Heart Association.  I am the Associate Director of the Residency Program in Thoracic Surgery at UT Southwestern and teach in the Biomedical Engineering Program at Southwestern Graduate School. I have an active clinical practice that focuses on cardiac surgery, surgical electrophysiology, aortic surgery, and cardiac transplantation.