Fernando A. M. Herbella, MD, PhD is an associated professor at the Escola Paulista de Medicina, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, the same institution where he did all his trainning from medical school to residency in General Surgery and Gastrointestinal Surgery and obtained his academic titles M.Sc., PhD and habilitation. He did a research fellowship in esophageal surgery in physiology at the University of California, San Francisco under Dr. Marco Patti and a research fellowship in esophageal surgery in physiology at the University of Rochester, under Dr. Jeffrey Peters. His main academic interest is in the foregut.Marco G. Patti, MD, FACS, was born and raised in Catania, Italy. He graduated from the University of Catania, School of Medicine in 1981. Between1983 and 1986 he did research at the University of California San Francisco, studying gastrointestinal physiology (Dr. Carlos Pellegrini and Dr. Lawrence Way). Between 1986 and 1993, he completed a Residency in General Surgery at UCSF. After completion of his residency, he did a fellowship in esophageal cancer at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong (Professor John Wong). Subsequently he practiced at the University of California San Francisco, the University of Chicago, and the University of North Carolina. Presently he is involved with education at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Patti’s clinical activity focuses on foregut disorders. Over the years, he has given major contribution to the diagnosis and treatment of GERD and achalasia. Dr. Patti has published more than 300 manuscripts in peer review journals and 9 books. He has been an invited speaker more than 220 times in the US. He is Past President of the International Society for Digestive Surgery and Past President of the International Society of Surgery. He was President for the World Congress of Surgery in August 2017 in Basel, Switzerland. He hasbeen an invited speaker in North and South America, Europe, and Asia, giving more than 160 lectures.