after only 6 years from graduating his specialty, in 1983, irinel popescu became specialist surgeon and in 1990 he became general surgeon, getting phd from carol davila university bucharest. the renowned dan setlatec, md. phd supervised his phd thesis. after a while, he left romania with the desire of perfecting himself and to bring groundbreaking changes into the romanian surgery techniques. he first was in berlin, germany, for two weeks, at the “charite” hospital. he then left for two months in france, at “paul brousse” from paris. after his returning from france, he decided to leave in usa. half of a year he spent at pittsburgh university and another almost three years and “mount sinai” hospital from new york. after his training he had experience exchanges with institutions from munich (“ludwig maximilian” university), hamburg (“eppendorf” university), cape town, south africa (“groote schur” hospital), essen (university hospital), athens (“palio faliro” hospital) and milan (“niguarda” hospital).