Dr. Rubino, who was appointed associate professor of surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of gastrointestinal metabolic surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, has advanced diabetes surgery as an entirely new surgical field—one in which gastrointestinal operations can be performed to directly treat diabetes—not just as a byproduct of weight-loss surgery.

He is the proponent of a novel procedure specifically designed to treat type 2 diabetes. Instead of shrinking the stomach like most approaches to weight-loss surgery, his approach reroutes the small intestine, leaving the stomach intact. In a study published in the Annals of Surgery, he reported that the procedure dramatically reduced diabetes in animals—demonstrating for the first time that surgery has a direct effect on type 2 diabetes unrelated to weight loss. The procedure, now known as Rubino's Procedure, has been performed on patients at several centers worldwide.

Dr. Rubino was a principal organizer of an influential Diabetes Surgery Summit, held in Rome in March this year. The international consensus conference helped establish the field, making international recommendations for the use of surgery and creating an International Diabetes Surgery Task Force. Dr. Rubino serves as a founding member.

Dr. Rubino offers clinical expertise in numerous laparoscopic approaches to metabolic and weight-loss surgery—including Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), gastric banding, sleeve gastrectomy and laparoscopic redo surgery for failed bariatric procedures—and laparoscopic digestive surgery. His research interests also include studies of the mechanisms of appetite control following RYGB and endoluminal and transgastric approach to bariatric and diabetes surgery.

Most recently, Dr. Rubino was an assistant professor of surgery at the Catholic University of Rome, Italy, and director of the Metabolic Surgery Research Program at the IRCAD-European Institute of Telesurgery in Strasbourg, France, where he was also a surgeon in the Department of Digestive and Endocrine Surgery in the Hopital Civil.