Ricardo Rodrigues Pinto, graduated as medical doctor at Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto in 2005 and is an Orthopaedic Surgeon at ULS Santo António, Porto, since 2016. Since 2020 he is the Head of Spinal Unit (UVM), dedicating full time to treatment of spinal diseases (degenerative, trauma, deformity, tumour and infection).

He obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester (UK) in 2015 with a thesis entitled “Isolation and phenotypic characterisation of human notochordal cells: implications for the development of cell-based therapies for intervertebral disc degeneration” with a Grant from Programme for the Advanced Medical Education (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Fundação Champalimaud, Ministério da Saúde, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Apifarma). Since 2016 is an invited Professor of Orthopaedics at Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar.

He is the present Secretary General of the Portuguese Spine Society (SPPCV) and AO Spine Officer for Orthopaedics in Portugal. He is an AO Spine Knowledge Forum for Spinal Cord Injury Associate Member and AO Spine RECODE-DCM Steering Committee Member.

He has been supervisor of 13 master students in Medicine and jury of 8 master thesis. He has won 15 national and international awards, among which Jorge Mineiro Award (awarded in 2013 by the Portuguese Orthopaedic and Traumatology Society), the EFORT Spring Travelling Fellowship (awarded by the European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology in 2014) and the IGASS Spine Fellowship in 2015.

He has done 9 international fellowships in spine surgery and is the author or co-author of 79 peer reviewed papers. He is actively involved in research in the areas of spine surgery, spine degeneration and spinal cord injury, being currently involved in 2 international clinical trials.