Professor Albert Wolthuis graduated medical school in 2002 (KU Leuven, cum laude). He became a general surgeon in 2008 and further trained in abdominal surgery with specialization in colorectal surgery. Since 2011 he is a staff member at the department of Abdominal Surgery (University Hospital Leuven) with special interest in minimally invasive colorectal surgery (NOSE, CME), IBD, transanal approaches (TaTME, TAMIS, Ta-IPAA), reoperative (pelvic) surgery, debulking and HIPEC. He defended his PhD titled ‘New strategies to improve outcome after colorectal surgery’ in 2015.

Furthermore, he is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a fellow of the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons, and he passed the European Board of Surgical Qualification exam for Coloproctology and for Surgical Oncology. He has been secretary general of the Belgian Group for Endoscopic Surgery, and is board member of the Belgian Society of ColoRectal Surgery. He is a regular reviewer for many surgical journals and is associate editor for the Acta Chirurgica Belgica, for Colorectal Disease and for the European Journal of Surgical Oncology. He (co-)authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and several book chapters.