Professor McGiffin is presently the Senior Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Department of Cardiothoracic
Surgery and Transplantation, The Alfred Hospital, (now retired from clinical practice) and Professor
of cardiothoracic surgery, Monash University, Melbourne Australia and Honorary Professor, School
of Medicine, University of Queensland, Brisbane Australia.

Professor McGiffin spent most of his career at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where his
major focus was thoracic transplantation, mechanical circulatory support, and pulmonary
endarterectomy. He returned to Australia in 2013 as head of the department of cardiothoracic
surgery and transplantation at the Alfred and Professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Monash
University, Melbourne from 2013 to 2021. His clinical activities were adult cardiac surgery,
pulmonary endarterectomy, adult heart transplantation, mechanical circulatory support, adult, and
pediatric lung transplantation. He established a pulmonary endarterectomy programme for chronic
thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension at the Alfred which is now the major referral programme
for Australia and New Zealand.

Since 2013 his major research interest has been in donor heart machine perfusion, the goal being to
extend the ischemic time of donor hearts from the current approximately 4 hours out to 8 hours by
hypothermic oxygenated machine perfusion (HOPE). Four years of experimental work have
underpinned the Australian/New Zealand Trial of Extended Donor Heart Ischemic Time, of which he
is the co-Principal Investigator. The use of HOPE in the trial has been transformative – there is no
donor heart anywhere in Australia or New Zealand that cannot be transported to a transplant centre
in either country. Another area of his research interests is investigating the pathology of ventricular
assist device driveline infection.