Rakesh C. Arora MD, PhD, FRCSC

Dr. Arora was born in London, Ontario, and obtained a Baccalaureate of Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario. From there, he next achieved his Medical Doctorate from the University of Toronto in 1996 before moving to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia to undergo his Cardiac Surgery Residency. During his time in his residency in Dalhousie, he completed a Doctorate of Philosophy in the Department of Anatomy/Neurobiology in the field of neurocardiology. After completing two further years of training at the University of Calgary, in Calgary, Alberta, Dr. Arora became the first Cardiac Surgeon in Canada to also complete a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine in 2006.

Dr. Arora joined the Cardiac Sciences Program and the Section of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Manitoba as an Academic Clinician-Scientist in 2006. Dr. Arora was appointed the Director of Research for the Section of Cardiac Surgery in 2007 and was promoted to the Full Professor in Surgery, Anesthesia, and Physiology & Pathophysiology at the University of Manitoba in 2016. In 2017 was appointed to Section Head of Cardiac Surgery for the WRHA and the University of Manitoba.

In 2009, Dr. Arora has pioneered a national society, The Canadian Cardiovascular critical care (CANCARE) Society (http://www.cancaresociety.com/) that aims to advance the care of critically-ill cardiovascular patients using interdisciplinary expertise in a cooperative model. In addition, he is a Past-President of the American Delirium Society (2015) and a Co-Founder of the International Federation of Delirium Societies (iDelirium). More recently (2018) he has been appointed to the Executive of the Enhanced Recovery after Surgery Cardiac Surgery Society (ERAS-CS), the President-Elect for the Canadian Society of Cardiac Surgeons (2019), and the Chair Society of Thoracic Surgeons Workforce for Critical Care.