Mattias Duytschaever was born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1970. He obtained his medical degree in 1995 at the University of Ghent, after which he conducted research for his PhD into ‘the role of atrial electrical remodeling in the management of atrial fibrillation’, under the supervision of Professor Allessie, at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands. After becoming Professor in Electrophysiology at the University of Ghent (2002), he has been conducting interventional electrophysiology at the Department of Electrophysiology at St Jan Hospital Bruges. Professor Duytschaever is an active clinical researcher at both of these establishments and has published widely on the pathogenesis and treatment of atrial fibrillation. He has conducted several randomised controlled trials and is the author of 155 “A”-publications in peer-reviewed journals, leading to an h-index of 35. He was part of the scientific committee for the yearly Biosense AFib symposium and the EHRA educational team for eight consecutive years and now serves as associated editor for the Europace journal.