Jacques Marescaux

Jacques Marescaux is Founding President of the Research Institute against Digestive Cancer (IRCAD) in Strasbourg (France), an institute with a unique structure that has helped propel surgery into the information age. 

He enrolled at Strasbourg's Faculty of Medicine, where he discovered his vocation by specialising in surgery in 1971. He was appointed clinical director in 1975, University Professor in the Digestive Surgery Section in 1980 and, finally, department head in 1989.

Surgical advances in the early 1990s prompted the creation of a teaching structure dedicated to minimally invasive surgery. This led to the creation of IRCAD in 1994. In this unique institute, researchers, computer engineers, roboticists and international surgical experts have now been collaborating for over 30 years. Since its creation, IRCAD has been involved in numerous projects aimed at optimizing the use of robots. The most spectacular example was the Lindbergh operation performed from New York in 2001 on a patient in Strasbourg , demonstrating for the first time geographical barriers were no longer an impediment to performing surgery. In 2004, a new concept of transluminal surgery through natural orifices was launched (ANUBIS project), with the objective of avoiding any skin or muscle scarring. On 2 April 2007, the IRCAD team performed the first surgery of this kind.

In recognition of the need to maintain the link between the training institute and surgeons the IRCAD designed a totally free online Virtual University, called WebSurg in 2000. This site, specialized in minimally invasive surgery, facilitates the sharing of expertise among international professionals in their field of excellence, and boasts over 500,000 surgeons. Given the success of the IRCAD concept, Jacques Marescaux decided to create the IRCAD Taiwan in 2008, followed by other centres and mirror institutes in the state of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Beirut (Lebanon), Kigali (Rwanda, Wuxi (China) and Indore (India) between 2011 and 2024, with the IRCAD North America scheduled to open in 2025. With the exception of the Institut Pasteur, IRCAD stands out as the only French research institute with a strong presence on every continent.

During his 29-year career, Jacques Marescaux and his teams have been responsible for over 4,000 publications and communications, both nationally and internationally. He has given nearly 700 invited lectures at numerous universities in Europe, the United States, Japan and China. Jacques Marescaux is a member of 29 academies and learned societies, including, the French National Academies of Surgery, of Medicine and of Technologies. He was made Commander of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour in 2019.