Dr. Robert F Tranbaugh is Professor of Clinical Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Weill Cornell Medical College and serves as the Chair of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the New York Presbyterian-Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. 

Dr. Tranbaugh is a magna cum laude graduate of Franklin and Marshall College. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine, he completed his general and cardiothoracic surgery residencies at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Tranbaugh first joined the faculty at the State University of New York—Health Science Center at Brooklyn as director of pediatric cardiac surgery. In 1991 he was selected as the first Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center where he built a highly successful adult cardiac surgery program until assuming his current position in 2015.

A superb surgeon, Dr. Tranbaugh has consistently achieved outstanding results as measured by the New York State Department of Health Cardiac Surgery Reporting System. His coronary artery bypass mortality rates have been among the lowest of all cardiac surgeons in the State. He has regularly been named to the New York Best Doctors, Castle Connolly’s America’s Top Doctors, Super Doctors and as one of the US News and World Report Top 1% of cardiac surgeons in the United States.

Dr. Tranbaugh’s research interests have been focused on the role of radial artery grafting in improving outcomes after coronary artery bypass surgery. He has published extensively and frequently lectures on the use of the radial artery during bypass surgery, a procedure he has been at the forefront in developing. In addition to his expertise in complex arterial bypass surgery, he is an accomplished valve and aneurysm surgeon.

A past president of the New York Society of Thoracic Surgeons, Dr. Tranbaugh is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Cardiology. He is a member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the New York Surgical Society and the UCSF Naffziger Surgical Society.