Reinaldo Rampolla-Selles

After this, Rampolla was invited to participate in Stanford University's Heart-Lung and Lung Transplantation Program. After successfully completing this program in September 2009, Rampolla was invited to return to New Orleans as co-director of the Lung Transplant Services for Ochsner Medical Center. The program was shut down after Hurricane Katrina and the center was trying to revive this service to complete their transplant services. The services re-opened successfully in October 2009. On February 4, 2010, Rampolla-Selles successfully transplanted the first lungs in the state of Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Rampolla was one of many health practitioners that stayed behind in New Orleans caring for the many sick and injured who were caught in the path of the catastrophic hurricane. Evacuated five days later, the doctor found himself temporararily displaced to Dallas, Texas. Undeterred by the devastation, however, Rampolla returned to New Orleans and finished his fellowship in pulmonology in July 2007.

Following his graduation from high school, Rampolla attended the University of Puerto Rico's Natural Sciences College, becoming a member of Phi Sigma Alpha Fraternity. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in Sciences, he applied and was accepted into the School of Medical Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico, where he specialized in Internal Medicine. In 2004, Rampolla relocated to Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana as a Pulmonary Diseases, Critical Care and Environmental Medicine Fellow to concentrate in a Pulmonology sub-specialty.

Rampolla was born on November 22, 1974 in San Juan, Puerto Rico to attorneys Dahlia A. Selles-Iglesias de Rampolla and Reinaldo Rampolla-Briganti. He always expressed his interest in the medical field. Rampolla then attended Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola, an all-male private high school located in San Juan, Puerto Rico.