Jacques Marescaux MD, FACS, Hon FRCS, Hon FJSES, Hon FASA, Hon APSA

Jacques Marescaux is a professor of Surgery and Founding President of the Research Institute against Digestive Cancer (IRCAD), an institute with a unique structure that has propelled surgery into the information age, particularly in treating digestive system cancers. He is also a founder and member of the Board of Directors of the Hospital-University Institute of Strasbourg (IHU), a center of excellence whose aim was to develop image-guided minimally invasive surgery and foster technology transfer. In addition, he founded the European Institute of Telesurgery (EITS) as a training facility that has promoted the know-how and ground-breaking work of IRCAD.

Since its creation in 1994, EITS has become an international reference, having trained nearly 40 000 surgeons from 125 countries. A number of mirror institutes have already opened in Taiwan (2008), in Brazil in the State of Sao Paolo (2011) and Rio de Janeiro (2017), Beirut, Lebanon (2019), and a fifth institute will open in Kigali (Rwanda) in 2020-2021 to train surgeons from the African continent in minimally invasive surgery techniques. An additional institute is planned to open in Wuxi, near Shanghai (China) in 2021-2022.