Professor Paolo De Coppi is a Consultant Paediatric Surgeon with a special interest in congenital malformations and their treatment using minimally invasive techniques. He is also the Head of the Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at the UCL Institute of Child Health. Since 2009, he has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and since 2005, an Honorary Assistant Professor in pediatric surgery at the University of Padua, Italy. Professor De Coppi's research focuses on stem cells and tissue engineering with the aim of finding new modalities for treating complex congenital anomalies. He has published numerous articles and book chapters, and his work on using stem cells from amniotic fluid for therapeutic applications was featured as the cover story of Nature Biotechnology in January 2007. In 2010, he was part of the team that performed the first successful transplantation of a tissue-engineered trachea on a child. His areas of expertise include neonatal and paediatric surgery, keyhole surgery, tissue engineering and major reconstructions, fundoplication, appendicectomy, hernia, undescended testes, oesophageal atresia, and diaphragmatic hernia.