Alessandro Frigiola is Head of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery and Congenital Heart Disease in Adult – IRCCS Policlinico San Donato
Co-Director of Cardiac Surgery Area and Head of Intenational Cooperation It is one of the leading experts in cardiac surgery for congenital and acquired heart diseases both for children and adults.
He performed over 10,000 procedures. He is specialized in surgical repair of the mitral valve and the aorta (over 1.000 operations).
He is one of the most experienced Italian and European surgeon for Ross intervention (replacement of aortic valve with the pulmonary valve from the same patient).
For over 25 years, he has been engaged an international cooperation activities for the development of cardiac surgery in 18 countries worldwide.
AATS member (American Association Thoracic Surgery).

Antonio Colombo contributions are in the field of coronary stenting. His observations were pivotal to allow the utilization of dual antiplatelet therapy and without oral anticoagulation lowering the risk of stent thrombosis.
Prof. Colombo has been the first to utilize coronary stents in the treatment of complex coronary artery disease conceiving the concept of short and long stents.
He is on the Editorial Board of the major Journals of Cardiology and Interventional Cardiology, occupies also the position of Professor of Cardiology at University Vita e Salute of San Raffaele Hospital and he has been an author of over 1000 original papers
These accomplishments led him to receive the honor as Best Clinical Researcher in the year 1994 by the Thorax Center, Erasmus University, Rotterdam and the Career Award at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutic Symposia in 1998.

Francesco Bedogni is the Chief of the department of Clinical Cardiology, Coronary Care Unit and Interventional Cardiology at San Donato hospital in Milan (IRCCS Policlinico San Donato). He is working as an Interventional Cardiologist since 1984. He is acknowledged as an international expert in all endovascular interventions: structural heart disease interventions and coronary and peripheral vascular interventions.
He is a European proctor for TAVI and MITRACLIP for Medtronic, St Jude, Abbott and Boston Scientific. He is a consultant for these techniques in many Italian and foreign hospitals. He is part of the Board of Italian society of Interventional Cardiology (Sici-Gise) and he is the responsible of several Clinical Studies and position papers.

Lorenzo Menicanti is Professor and Chairman of Cardiac Surgery Department at the IRCCS Policlinico San Donato University Hospital in Milan, Italy.
He is author or coauthor of more than 160 peer-reviewed papers, related to many areas of Cardiac Surgery specialty.
He is member of the editorial board of several scientific journals: European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, Giornale Italiano di Cardiologia. His main interest is surgery for Ischemic Heart Failure, Coronary Arteries Desease and Valve Surgery. More than 20 years ago, he originally developed a method of reconstruction of left ventricle after acute myocardial infarction which is the basis of the currently most used type of surgical ventricular restoration.
In 2013-2014, he served as president of the Italian Society of Cardiac Surgery
He is currently member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, Italian Society of Cardiac Surgery, Belgian Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery.

Mario Carminati is the director of Pediatric and Adult Congenital Cardiology Centre at IRCCS Policlinico San Donato University Hospital (Milan, Italy) since 2000.
He has been chairman and/or moderator in more than 800 congresses and curses while, at the same time, he strongly contributed to the scientific community being author and co-author of more than 250 peer-reviewed papers.
He is particularly involved in the field of non-surgical treatment of various congenital heart disease, both in children and adults, like ASD and VSD closure, stent implantation, percutaneous pulmonary valve replacement and aortic coarctation treatment.
From 1998 to 2001, he was President of the Italian Society of Pediatric Cardiology and Councillor of the Association for European Paediatric Cardiology.
Today he is currently member of the Society for Cardiac Angiography and Interventions, European Society of Cardiology and Italian Society of Interventional Cardiology.

Massimo Lombardi is Head of Multimodality Cardiac Imaging at Policlinico San Donato and Professor of Cardiac Imaging at the San Raffaele University in Milan, Italy.
He is author or co-author of more than 230 peer-reviewed papers, related to Cardiac Imaging (Scopus). His main interest is cardiac Imaging and namely Cardiac Magnetic Resonance.
He is member of the editorial board of several scientific journals such as European Journal of Cardiology, Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, European Journal of Cardiology Cardiovascular Imaging, and Associate Editor of European Journal of Cardiology Heart Failure, Associate Editor Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine. More than 25 years ago, he started to be involved in Cardiac Magnetic Resonance and from 1999 till 2013 he has been the Head of Cardiac MR unit at CNR (National Research Council) site in Pisa where for the first time in Italy a MR system fully dedicated to heart disease was installed.
In 2008-10, he served as Chairman of the Working Group on Cardiac Magnetic Resonance of the European Society of Cardiology.
He is currently member of the Scientific Committee of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (a branch of European Society of Cardiology).

Mattia Glauber is the Director of Adult Cardiac Surgery at the Sant’Ambrogio Clinic in Milan. From 1999 to 2014 he was Director of the Cardiothoracic Department of the Monasterio Foundation, affiliated with the CNR of Italy, having the opportunity to work with ingenious and researchers in different fields of medical areas.
He is nowadays considered a International Key opinion Leader in Minimal Invasive Cardiac Surgery with more than 3500 minimal invasive surgical interventions.
He is author and coauthors of more than 250 peer-reviewed papers. He is currently member of different Societies (SICCH, ANMCO, EACTS, AATS, STS, ESC) and was Scientific Secretary of the SICCH. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery and MMCTS, and part of the Editorial board of Innovations and TJTCS.
He is consultant for several medical companies and he is Director of a II° level Master on Innovation in Cardiac Surgery at the “Scuola Superiore S.Anna” University of Pisa.
During his career he contributes to several cardiac surgery innovations being author of 5 patents.

Ottavio Alfieri is Professor and Chairman of Cardiac Surgery at the S. Raffaele University Hospital in Milan, Italy.
His main interest is surgery for valvular heart diseases (particularly mitral and aortic valve repair and replacement, with more than 350 and 250 case/year respectively), surgery for coronary disease, arrhythmias and cardiac failure (left ventricular restoration, left ventricular assist devices).
More than 20 years ago, he originally developed a method of mitral valve repair ( the edge to edge technique) which is the basis of the currently most used type of percutaneous correction of mitral regurgitation. His group is very active in the percutaneous treatment of structural heart diseases (TAVI, TMVR, MitraClip, Valve-in-Valve, Valve-in-Ring, Paravalvular Leak Closure, ect).
In 2011, he served as president of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic
Surgery (EACTS). He is author or coauthor of more than 550 peer-reviewed papers, related to many areas of cardiac surgery. He is member of the editorial board of several scientific journals. He is currently member of the STS, AATS, ESC, EACTS.

Paolo Denti is responsible of transcatheter therapy for mitral disease as Hybrid Cardiovascular Surgeon since 2013 in the Heart Surgery department at San Raffaele Hospital, Milan. Adjunct Professor for “Hybrid Cardiac Surgery” and for Master in Interventional Cardiology since 2014 at San Raffaele University, Milan. ESC Fellow and EACTS Member.
He is and expert Mitraclip implanter with more than 100 cases/year and he recently implanted the 1st Tiara valve (percutaneous mitral valve) in Italy (2nd Europe). He is also gain a strong expertise in percutaneous mitral valve annuloplasty (Cardioband device) since 2013 and in percutaneous Tricuspid valve repair (Tricinch device) since 2014. Expert on Minimally invasive mitral valve repair included Neochord Transapical implantation, TAVI (TF, Tap, Tao) either valve in valve mitral and aortic valve replacement and valve in ring procedures.
Author and co-author of more than 50 papers on peer reviewed journals and book chapters. Honored of the podium in all renewed international congresses, he is involved in experimental animal surgery and in development of new cardiac devices.
Core interests in innovations, new percutaneous approach to structural heart disease (in particular mitral valve repair and aortic valve implantation), pre-clinical animal/bench study for development of new cardiac devices.