Michael Borger completed his cardiac surgery training and a PhD in Clinical Cardiovascular Sciences at the University of Toronto, Canada in 2001. After completing a 1 year fellowship with Dr Friedrich-Wilhelm Mohr at the Leipzig Heart Center in 2002, he took a position as Staff Cardiac Surgeon at the Toronto General Hospital and Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto from 2002 to 2006 under the mentorship of Dr Tirone David. In 2006, Michael returned to Germany as a Staff Surgeon at the Leipzig Heart Center. He became adjunct Professor at the University of Leipzig in 2008 and was appointed as Assistant Director of the Leipzig Heart Center in 2009. In 2014, Michael became the Director of Aortic Surgery and the Director of the Cardiovascular Institute at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in New York. He was also appointed the George H. Humphries Professor of Surgery at CUMC. In 2017, Michael returned to Leipzig as the Director of Cardiac Surgery at the Leipzig Heart Center and Professor of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Leipzig.
His clinical and research interests include aortic surgery, minimal invasive and percutaneous valve procedures, aortic and mitral valve repair surgery, and ischemic mitral regurgitation. He is an author on over 300 peer-reviewed publications and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, and AORTA. He is former Associate Editor for the Thoracic Vascular section of the European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery, and an Associate Editor for the journal Structural Heart: The Journal of the Heart Team.