Ignazio Marino is a world renowned surgeon specialised in liver transplantation. Graduated in Medicine and Surgery at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome, he trained in Cambridge and in the United States, in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and in 1992 he performed the first baboon-to-human liver xenotransplant in medical history. A former member of the Italian Senate for the Democratic Party (2006-2013), he was appointed Chair of the Investigative Committee on the National Health Care System in 2008 and has been Mayor of Rome from 2013 to 2015.

He is the author of Credere e curare (2005), a book that deals with the medical profession and the influence that faith — seen as a religious creed but also as compassion, solidarity and empathy towards all human beings — has upon it, Nelle tue mani. Medicina, fede, etica e diritti (2009), Credere e conoscere (Believing and Knowing, 2012), a dialogue with Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini about modernity’s most significant ethical issues, and Un marziano a Roma (A Martian in Rome, 2016).