David Taggart is currently Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery at the University of Oxford.

He qualified from Glasgow University in 1981 and in 1989 was awarded an MD with Honours for studies on the effects of hypothermia on the metabolic response to cardiac surgery. He subsequently trained as the Senior Registrar at the Royal Brompton Hospital under Professor Yacoub and Mr Lincoln.

In 1995 he was appointed consultant cardiac surgeon at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford where he obtained a PhD (from Strathclyde) for studies of the inflammatory response during cardiac surgery. In 2004 he was appointed Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery at the University of Oxford.

His main interests are coronary revascularization, arterial grafts and off pump surgery. He has authored over 220 peer reviewed scientific papers and is the PI of the ART trial- one of the largest surgical trials ever conducted (a randomized trial of 3000 CABG patients to single or bilateral IMA grafts during CABG).

He was President of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery of GB and Ireland (April 2010-April 2012), Chairman of the European Society of Cardiology Cardiovascular Surgery Working Group, a member of the Adult Domain of the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery and a member of the AATS and STS. He was recently appointed as the lead for cardiothoracic Surgery in the UK by the Royal college of Surgeons of England from 2013-16.