Dr. Walter Klepetko graduated from the Vienna Medical School in 1978. In 1989 he was appointed Director of the school’s Lung Transplantation Program and, since 2010, has been Chairman and Professor of the Department ofThoracic Surgery. In 2002 he founded the European Postgraduate School for Thoracic Surgery in Bergamo and served as its director until 2009. He has been awarded honorary memberships in the Czech Transplant Society, the Romanian Societies of Thoracic Surgery and Transplantation, the Hungarian Societies of Surgery and Pulmonology, and the British Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons. He has served as the president of the EACTS, councillor of ISHLT, and international councillor of the AATS. Dr. Klepetko serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. He has published more than 500 peer reviewed papers.