Dr. Kalejs is a staff surgeon at Pauls Stradins University hospital, he performs all kind of routine adult cardiac surgery procedures. He is one of the “heart team” core members at this institution being involved in all transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) and hybrid cardiac procedures. Besides he is directly responsible for the development and maintenance of the TAVI patients registry. In parallel to the clinical work he is involved in student and post-graduate education lecturing in seminars both for students and cardiology residents. He is actively taking part in giving lectures on cardiac surgery and related topics to wider audiences (medical personnel not directly related to cardiology).Dr. Kalejs has achieved excellent accomplishments in academic field both research and education. Besides being a very young, talented and promising practicing surgeon he has shown great talent in organizing research work. By saying this it is meant not only basic research which concentrates mainly on biomechanics but also clinical research which involves several clinical studies and the creation of a registry and follow-up system for all TAVI patients in Latvia. He holds a position of a principal investigator at the Laboratory of Biomechanics at Riga Stradins University. There his research interests have been mainly concentrated on mechanical properties of heart valves and their substitutes. This was also the topic of his doctoral thesis which he defended in 2014. The thesis was awarded a price of recognition from the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Dr Kalejs has been very actively publishing his research, with more than 20 peer-reviewed papers and numerous more in local popular general-medical journals. He also actively undertakes editorial work for several journals, most actively - the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery and Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery.He is a member of several local and international professional societies including but not limited to: European Society of Cardiology, European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, Scandinavian Association for Thoracic Surgery among others.