Charles D. Fraser Jr., M.D., is chief of congenital heart surgery and cardiac surgeon-in-charge at Texas Children's Hospital, the nation's largest pediatric hospital. His academic appointments include chief of the division of congenital heart surgery in the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Fraser also holds the Donovan Chair in Congenital Heart Surgery at Texas Children's Hospital, and has joint clinical appointments at the Texas Heart Institute and the University of Texas, Houston.

As chief of the division of congenital heart surgery at Baylor and co-director of the Texas Children's Heart Center, Dr. Fraser has developed a team specialized in the surgical treatment of infants, children and adults with congenital cardiac disease. His team focuses on the surgical care of these patients with emphasis on complex neonatal repair of hypoplastic left heart syndrome, transposition of the great arteries, truncus arteriosis and other serious cardiac malformations. Dr. Fraser has developed dedicated pediatric heart and lung transplant and mechanical circulatory support teams to offer every available therapy in the care of critically ill children.

Dr. Fraser has maintained an active research program with specific interests in congenital heart surgical outcomes, transplantation, mechanical circulatory support and brain protection. In 2002, his team developed the first pediatric lung transplant program in the Southwest. He implanted the world's first DeBakey Child™ cardiac assist device in March 2004. Dr. Fraser has contributed over 100 journal articles, chapters and textbooks to the medical literature. His awards include the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award from the University of Texas in 1999, the American Heart Association Medical Honoree in 2002, and the Michael E. DeBakey Distinguished Service Award from Baylor College of Medicine in 2004.

Dr. Fraser received a bachelor's degree with honors in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980. He received his medical degree from the University of Texas at Galveston, where he was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society. His postgraduate residency education was at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., where he specialized in general, cardiothoracic and thoracic transplant surgery. Dr. Fraser completed fellowships in pediatric cardiac surgery at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia; cardiac transplant research at the Johns Hopkins Hospital; and cardiovascular surgery at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, Texas. He was recruited to Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in 1995, to establish a new congenital heart surgery unit. Since then, he and his team have performed over 6,000 congenital cardiac repairs and related surgeries in children.