Professor of Surgery at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, Professor Alfred Kocher specializes in the surgical treatment of heart valve disease, in particular the Ross procedure, the Tirone David operation and novel heart valve devices.​

Professor Kocher graduated from Vienna University School of Medicine and completed his surgical residency at the Medical University of Vienna. After training at the General Hospital in Vienna and the Silesian University in Zabrze, Poland, he spent five  years as attending cardiac surgeon at Cardiac Center Hindenburg, Poland and at Medical University Innsbruck, Austria.​

His interests in cardiac transplantation and myocardial regeneration took him to Stanford University, California and Columbia University, New York in the late 1990s. Professor Kocher’s dedication to training and mentoring has been recognized by the EACTS Leonardo Da Vinci Award for Training Excellence in 2011 and the Vienna Open Medical Institute Award in 2015.​