Wouter Oosterlinck is a cardiac surgeon and senior staff member at University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, who is studying ischemia-reperfusion and postischemic remodeling in both clinical and preclinical settings. He mastered the off-pump coronary surgery and broadened the revascularization approach by minimal access robotic coronary surgery. For this, he was trained by Francis Sutter (Lankenau Philadelphia) and Sam Balkhy (Chicago University) and implemented this knowledge in his own center before transferring the techniques to others.
He obtained his PhD on ‘Postconditioning the heart in diabetes and the metabolic syndrome: functional and therapeutic implications in experimental mouse models’ .

He has several peer reviewed publications in high ranked journals on robotics and minimal invasive approaches. Currently, he is the chair of the robotic cardiac taskforce (EACTS) and chair for cardiac surgery in the EMA expert panel. He is a proctor in robotic surgery for Intuitive, Medtronic and ORSI academy and devotes a lot of his time to training and education of new robotic teams.