During this time, he began meeting the pioneer surgeons who make up the personalities profiled in his book, “Open Heart.”
Cooper has published almost 850 medical and scientific papers and chapters, and has written, edited or co-edited 11 major textbooks. He holds three doctoral degrees and is a fellow of both the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the American College of Surgeons.
Cooper also was the founding honorary secretary of the International Xenotransplantation Association in 1997 and its president from 1999-2001. Cooper was the editor-in-chief of Xenotransplantion from 2001-07. He was selected to an honorary membership of the IXA in 2009 and was the recipient of The Transplantation Society-Roche Award for Excellence in Translational Science in 2010. Cooper also received the American Society of Transplantation Basic Science Established Investigator Award in 2014 and The Transplantation Society’s Excellence in Basic Science Award in 2016.