Ruggero De Paulis is Director of the Department of Cardiac Surgery at the European Hospital in Rome since 2006. He graduated at the University of L’Aquila and obtained the Medical specialization at the University of Turin; then he spent two years in the USA at the Artificial Heart Program at the University of Utah and two years as an attending surgeon at the VI and XII University of Paris. 

From 1991 he worked in Rome as a researcher at the University of Tor Vergata, where he was appointed Associate Professor in 2002. In 2006, he became Director of the Department of Cardiac Surgery at the European Hospital in Rome. 

In 2017 he was appointed Associate Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine University in New York. Since 2020 he has directed the Chair of Cardiac Surgery at Unicamillus University in Rome. He was President of the Vascular Domain of the European Society of Cardiac Surgery (EACTS) from 2014 to 2017. He then served as President of the same European Society (EACTS) during 2018-2019. He is currently President of the Francis Fontan Fund at the European Society (EACTS), which awards international fellowships to young surgeons who excel in various aspects of cardiac and thoracic surgery.

His main interest is in aortic and mitral repair surgery and he is the inventor of the “Valsalva” aortic rosthesis, currently used worldwide for aortic root and ascending aorta surgeries.

He is the co-inventor of a new ring (Physioflex) for mitral valve repair. 

He is author of more than 250 scientific articles in international journals. He has an extensive practice in the treatment of aortic and mitral repair and aneurysmal diseases of the aorta and is an internationally renowned specialist in aortic valve preservation and repair.

UniCamillus Full Professor.