Redmond Burke - Biography

Biography

Redmond Burke was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a US Navy flight navigator, Redmond Joseph Burke, and his wife Claire Lorraine Burke, both from San Francisco, California. He is married to Kim Burke, and they have three daughters. Olivia, Noelle, and Grace. Noelle is a 2010 AAU National Gymnastics Champion.

Burke and his three younger sisters grew up in Cupertino, California. He was educated in public schools - Portal Elementary School, John F. Kennedy Junior High School, and Monta Vista High School, where he co-captained the varsity wrestling and Championship football teams, and won the Outstanding Wrestler award at the Central Coast Section Championships in 1976, and placed fifth in the State Championship that year. Influential coaches included Patrick Lovell, Ron Edwards, Dave Vierra, Rudy Lapera, and Duane "Buck" Shore.

Accepted at Yale University, Brown University and Dartmouth College, he attended Stanford University, majoring in Human Biology. He walked on and made the varsity football team as a freshman under NFL Hall of Fame Coach Jack Christiansen. Burke co-captained the varsity rugby team, touring New Zealand and Canada, where he played wing forward. He graduated with Honors and Distinction, with election to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Burke attended medical school at Harvard University from 1980 to 1984. Influential instructors included Hardy Hendren, Paul Buttenweiser and Judah Folkman. Burke was present for the first heart transplants in New England, performed by Professor John J. Collins, at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Burke was selected for General Surgical Residency Training at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, under then Surgeon in Chief, John A. Mannick MD, Mosely Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. The Brigham training philosophy was "see one, do one, teach one." Notable instructors included Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Murray, who performed the world’s first kidney transplant.

In 1989, after completing his General Surgery training at the Brigham, and in preparation for his cardiac training, Burke spent a year as a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Spectroscopy Laboratory, under Michael S. Feld, PhD. He investigated the use of laser induced tissue fluorescence spectroscopy to diagnose rejection in transplanted cardiac tissue.

Burke was selected for Cardiac Surgery Training at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. Burke spent six months as the Chief Resident in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery under Professor Aldo Castaneda, and attending surgeons, Richard Jonas, John Mayer, and Frank Hanley. When Dr Hanley accepted the position of Chief of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery at the University of California in San Francisco, the group offered Burke his position, and he joined the Children's Hospital Boston attending staff in 1992, becoming an Instructor in Surgery at the Harvard Medical School.