Dr Lee Swanstrom was in Dublin today (May 28) to receive his Engineers Ireland Fellowship parchment from Engineers Ireland past president John O’Dea. Each year the president may invite candidates who they feel have made an outstanding contribution to the profession to Fellowship. Dr Swanstrom, an award-winning surgeon with the Oregon Clinic’s Gastrointestinal and Minimally Invasive Surgery division (GMIS), was awarded his Fellowship last year by John O’Dea, chief executive of Galway-based medical devices company Crospon. Dr. Swanstrom completed his training in general surgery at Legacy Emanuel Hospital and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). He finished his fellowship in surgical endoscopy at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and has received numerous honours and awards including the Golden Scalpel Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was twice featured as one of Portland Monthly Magazine’s ‘Top Doctors’. In addition to his role at the Oregon Clinic, Dr Swanstrom is director for Providence’s Advanced GI Surgery Fellowships. He is also a professor of surgery at the University of Strasbourg and director of the innovations programmes for the Institut Hopitalo Universitaire – Strasbourg, a programme established by the French government to revamp surgical training and the clinical practice of surgery in France. Dr Swanstrom is credited with performing the first natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery in the United States in 2007, a transgastric cholecystectomy, as well as many other pioneering ‘firsts’. He is one of only two physicians in Oregon who implants LINX devices to control gastroesophogeal reflux disease (GERD). Promoting medtech involvement was a feature of O’Dea’s term as president of Engineers Ireland. Throughout the year he continually highlighted engineers’ contribution to the betterment of health and promoted greater involvement of engineers in the medtech sector.