Ralph J. Damiano Jr., MD, is the Evarts A. Graham Professor of Surgery, Chief, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

Dr. Damiano has authored more than 500 publications and given over 700 lectures/presentations nationally and internationally. His major contributions are in the area of myocardial preservation, surgical electrophysiology, and minimally invasive cardiac surgery. He has been Associate Editor of JCTVS and Journal of the American College of Cardiology. He was Editor-in-Chief of Innovations from 2008-2018. He has twice been a member of the Bioengineering, Technology and Surgical Sciences Study Section at the NIH. Dr. Damiano is past president of the Society of Clinical Surgery, the Cardiac Surgical Biology Club, and the ISMICS. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the AATS in May 2020.

Dr. Damiano has been a pioneer in the area of minimally invasive cardiac surgery. His developmental work on robotically assisted microsurgery for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) earned him a Computer World Smithsonian Award in June of 1997. Dr. Damiano performed the first robotically assisted surgical procedure in North America, a CABG, in December 1998. He also has been a leader in the field of the surgical treatment of arrhythmias. His team at Washington University is world-renowned for its clinical and basic research on the surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation. His group has developed the gold-standard surgical procedure, the Cox-Maze IV operation, which has been adopted around the world.