Dr. Emile Bacha is a board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon with a subspecialization in pediatric cardiac surgery. From 2000-2004, he was the Surgical Director of the Congenital Heart Center at the University of Chicago. From 2004-2009, he was Senior Associate in Cardiac Surgery at the Children's Hospital Boston and Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, as well as Cardiac Surgery Fellowship Program Director, and Director of the Pediatric Heart Valve Center. Since January 2010, Dr. Bacha has been Director of the Congenital and Pediatric Cardiac Surgery program at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Weill Cornell Medical School. In July 2011, he was appointed Chief of the Division of Cardiac, Thoracic, and Vascular Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. In 2026, he became Chair of the Department of Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief for NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia.

Dr. Robert Justo is a paediatric cardiologist, with subspecialty training in interventional cardiology. He is a staff specialist at Queensland Children’s Hospital where he was Director of Cardiology from 2006-2021. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland with research interests in long-term medical and neurodevelopmental outcomes of interventions in congenital heart disease, and rheumatic heart disease.