Pedro J. Del Nido MD

Dr. Pedro Jose del Nido graduated with honors (1969-1973) and then went on to medical school, also at UW-Madison (1973-1977). He became interested in cardiac surgery and subsequently moved to Boston for his general surgery residency (Boston University, 1977-1982). On a blind date during his intern year, he met Martha Friedman, an undergraduate at Brandeis University. He is a William E. Ladd Professor of Child Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Boston Children's Hospital.

He the 95th president of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS), was born in Santiago, Chile, the younger of 2 children born to Jose del Nido, a general surgeon, and Theresa Oliveres, a veterinarian. Raised primarily by his mother and grandparents following his father’s untimely death from coronary artery disease, Dr del Nido lived in Chile until moving to the United States at age 10 years when his mother took a faculty position at Michigan State University. The family moved to Wisconsin shortly thereafter, where Dr del Nido started his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in biochemistry at age 15.

They married at the end of his general surgery training. Dr del Nido then joined the Banting Institute at the University of Toronto as a senior research fellow in cardiovascular surgery (1982-1983), where he studied myocardial protection. This would remain among his primary research interests. He stayed in Toronto for his clinical fellowships in cardiothoracic surgery (the University of Toronto, 1983-1985) and pediatric cardiovascular surgery (Hospital for Sick Children, 1985-1986).