Thomas van Brakel is a cardio-thoracic surgeon at the Heart Center Catharina Hospital, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He has special interests in aortic surgery, arrhythmia surgery and minimally invasive thoracic surgery. He completed his medical training in Maastricht, The Netherlands, followed by a PhD on ‘Epicardial Treatment of Atrial Fibrillation’ at the department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Physiology. Part of this research he performed at the Center for Minimally Invasive and Robotic Surgery, Greenville, US. He completed his training as a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Radboud Universitair Medical Center Nijmegen in 2014 and worked from 2014-2021 as senior staff member cardiothoracic surgery at the Leiden University Medical Center.