Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri

Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri is a Maltese-British surgeon and academic best known for his pioneering role in the development and clinical implementation of minimal access, or key-hole, surgery. Since 2003, he has been Professor of Surgery at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy, and since 2008 has served as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Institute of Medical Science and Technology at the University of Dundee.

Professor Cuschieri obtained his medical degree from the Royal University of Malta in 1961 and soon moved to the United Kingdom to pursue research at the University of Liverpool. There, he became a lecturer in the medical school and, in 1974, was awarded a Personal Chair in Surgery. In 1976, he joined the University of Dundee School of Medicine as Professor of Surgery and Chairman of the Surgery and Molecular Oncology Department, where he began leading research into the foundations of minimal access surgery.

While working at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, Professor Cuschieri and his team advanced the medical and technological basis of minimally invasive surgery, contributing to the first such procedure in the UK in 1987. Concerns over inadequate training and surgical complications led to the establishment of specialist training units, including one founded under his directorship in 1993. He holds fifty-eight patents for surgical instruments, has published around five hundred peer-reviewed papers, and became European Editor-in-Chief of Surgical Endoscopy in 1992.