Pandora's Box

Adolfo A. Leirner was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1936. He received his degree in electrical engineering in 1958 from the Aeronautics Institute in S. José dos Campos, Brazil. He received his MD and PhD from the University of São Paulo, and since 1986 has been the chairman of the Center for Biomedical Technology of the Heart Institute (InCor), University of São Paulo Medical School, Brazil.

Ismar N. Cestari was born in São José do Rio Preto, Brazil in 1962. He received his MD in 1988 from the Fluminense Federal University Medical School, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He moved to the U.S.A. in 1989 to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics of the University of Maryland at Baltimore. In 1996 he received his PhD from the Neuroscience Program of the Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. In 1997 he returned to Brazil and since then has supervised the Electrophysiology and Tissue Engineering Laboratory at the Center for Biomedical Technology, Heart Institute (InCor), University of São Paulo Medical School, Brazil.