Payam Akhyari graduated as MD at the Hannover Medical School, accomplished his training in cardiac surgery at the University Hospitals of the Hannover Medical School, University of Heidelberg, University of Jena and University of Duesseldorf (Germany), including training in general and vascular surgery at academic hospitals in Hannover. He accomplished experimental studies on tissue engineered myocardium at Hannover Medical School in parallel to his studies for the medical program in 1999 and 2000 and was a stipend fellow of the Biomedical Science Exchange Program at the University of Toronto, Cardiovascular Research Center in Toronto/Canada (academic year 2000/2001). Along his surgical residency he continued his basic science work leading to habilitation (equivalent to postdoctoral lecture qualification) in 2014. Clinically, he was appointed as staff cardiac surgeon in 2011 at Dept. Cardiovascular Surgery/University Hospital Duesseldorf, and as associate professor for cardiac surgery (German: W2-Professur) at Medical Faculty/Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf in 2016, leading the sections of minimally invasive heart valve surgery (since 2014) and the surgical section of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) program. In 2022 he was appointed as Director of the Dept. Cardiac Surgery at University Hospital RWTH Aachen/Germany. In 2024 he was appointed as Director of the Dept. of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at West German Cardiovascular Center Essen, and Dept. of Cardiac Surgery at Heart Center EssenHuttrop/University Hospital Essen, Germany. He serves as Chair of Working Group on Aortic Valve Surgery of the German Society for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (DGTHG) and Chair of the Surgical Science and Translational Research Task Force of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS). He has served as congress president to the 50th Annual Conference of European Society for Artificial Organs (ESAO; 50th ESAO Congress (esao2024.com)) . His clinical and scientific interests are founded in thoracic transplantation, minimally invasive surgery, aortic surgery and heart failure surgery.