He is the Chairman and Surgeon-in-Chief of the Department of Surgery of the University Children’s Hospital Zurich. In the year 2010 he opened a Fetal Surgery Program in the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment at the University Hospital Zurich of which he is Co-Director. His research focused on the question whether spina bifida could be a candidate lesion for prenatal intervention. He demonstrated in a fetal sheep model of myelomeningocele that fetal surgery in fact spared neurologic function at birth. To date, he has successfully operated on more than 40 fetuses with spina bifida. This new insight paved the way to performing prenatal spina bifida repair on human patients.