Tomaž Štupnik

Dr. Tomaž Štupnik graduated in 2000 as a medical doctor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He completed his training in Thoracic Surgery in 2008 and finished his Ph.D. in Medical Statistics in 2017 when he was habilitated to Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana. He was the first thoracic surgeon in South-East Europe to perform a VATS Lobectomy (2008) and the first to perform Uniportal VATS Lobectomy (2015). He also played a significant role in spreading the VATS technique to South-East Europe. In 2018 he led the surgical team that established a very successful Lung Transplant program in Slovenia. In collaboration with Ethicon, he developed the ‘Ethicon Stupnik VATS Simulator’ to enable the deliberate practice of Video-thoracoscopic surgical skills. Since 2016 these simulators have been deployed to Europe, North America, Japan, China, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand.