Richard A. Jonas, MBBS, FRACS

Dr. Jonas is Emeritus Professor of Surgery at George Washington School of Medicine and Chief Emeritus of the Heart Institute at Children’s National Hospital. He attended St Peter’s College in Adelaide, South Australia and graduated with Honours from the University of Adelaide Medical School in 1974. He undertook his general surgical training in Australia at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria and began his cardiothoracic surgical training at Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. He completed his general cardiothoracic surgical training at Green Lane Hospital in Auckland New Zealand. He was admitted to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1982 and subsequently moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he undertook a fellowship in adult cardiac surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and in congenital cardiac surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital. He was invited to take a staff position at Boston Children’s Hospital with Dr Aldo Castaneda in 1984. In 1994 he was appointed to the William E Ladd Chair of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and became the Cardiovascular Surgeon in Chief at Children’s Hospital Boston. In 2004 after 22 years in Boston he moved to Washington DC where he established the Children’s National Heart Institute which he co-chaired as Chief of Cardiac Surgery until 2020. He continued to maintain his NIH supported laboratory at Children’s National Hospital until 2023. He continues to support the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery and is Chair of the Publications committee which publishes the World Journal for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery. He is also President of the affiliated Global Council for Education in Congenital Heart Surgery.

In 2005/6 Dr Jonas was President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the national organization representing both adult and pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons. In 2009/10 he was President of the Congenital Heart Surgeon’s Society of North America and from 2016-18 President of the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery.

For many years Dr. Jonas maintained an NIH supported laboratory research program at Boston Children’s Hospital and subsequently at Children’s National Hospital. He also initiated multiple NIH supported clinical research trials. Dr Jonas was a consultant to the FDA and a regular member of the CICS study group of the NIH. He worked with Project Hope for more than 25 years in establishing pediatric heart surgery in Shanghai China and supported educational efforts in congenital cardiac surgery in multiple countries including Hungary, Qatar and Morocco. He is the author of over 400 peer-reviewed publications and has authored and edited several textbooks. The second edition of his most recent textbook of cardiac surgery has been published in both Russian and Mandarin and is one of the most widely used textbooks of congenital cardiac surgery in China.