Roberto C. Heros was born in Havana, Cuba. He left Cuba in 1960 for exile. He participated as a paratrooper platoon commander in the Bay of Pigs invasion and was captured and released after two years in prison. He attended medical school at the University of Tennessee where he graduated, first in his class, in 1968.   He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Director of cerebrovascular surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital(1980). Dr. Heros moved through the academic ranks at Harvard to reach full professorship in 1989 at which time he moved to the University of Minnesota as the Lyle A. French Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery Dr. Heros moved to the University of Miami in 1995 as Professor, Co-Chairman and Program Director of the Department of Neurosurgery and the founding Director of the University of Miami International Health Center.