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“First, you must have curiosity. Second, you need the imagination to go anywhere with any idea that you want. Third, you’ve got to find a way to visualize the end. And the fourth thing you need is reach – to ensure you have the resources and collaborators you need to do your work.”

Broadening horizons

Dr. Hill’s path to medicine began in junior high when he was assigned to create a booklet outlining his future career goals by a teacher. Unsure of what to write but knowing that he wouldn’t follow his family’s more literary leanings—his father ran a printing company and his aunt was a well-known children’s book writer—he wrote down ‘doctor.’ And this planted the seed.

Dr. Hill then embarked on residencies in the United States and at the  in Stockholm, Sweden. It was during this time in Sweden that his interest in cardiac surgery became solidified and he was drawn into the world of mechanical circulatory support devices. After a year and a half of working internationally, Dr. Hill knew his next stop had to be at a cardiac surgery training program.

Crowning achievements

This commitment led him to San Francisco and the renowned researcher and cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Frank Gerbode. Under Dr. Gerbode, Dr. Hill says he was given the “reach” or the freedom and support to undertake critical medical research – often collaborating with other specialists, technicians and medical professionals in the process.

With so many accomplishments to his name, Dr. Hill is quick to note that his work with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) are where he did his best work. In 1971, he was the first person in the world to successfully use ECMO as temporary external life support for a patient experiencing lung failure, effectively stabilizing them time while the lungs healed.

“You would have people with bad pneumonia, bad lung trauma, and we would have to put the lungs at rest and have an artificial lung by the bed – like a respirator – which would take the carbon dioxide out and pump oxygen into the lung until a transplant was available,” he says. “You didn’t know it would work, until one day it did.”

In 1976, Dr. Hill founded Thoratec Laboratories which specialized in the cutting-edge development and manufacturing of implantable heart and lung assist devices. At Thoratec, Dr. Hill and his team developed numerous inventions, novel devices and surgical tools.

Additionally, in 1984, Dr. Hill performed the first bridge-to-transplant using a cardiac assist device for a patient experiencing heart failure. The results of these successful interventions were life-changing for the thousands of people who receive a second lease on life thanks to Dr. Hill’s skill and efforts.

Committing to positive collaboration

In 2018, Dr. Hill established the Donald Hill Family Postdoctoral Fellowships at Dal. These fellowships recognize the intellectual flexibility and financial supports needed to launch a postdoctoral career.  As stipulated by Dr. Hill, the fellowships also encourage recipients to ensure that they are, “mindful of the consequences of their research to society and the world.”

Fellows undertaking research in medicine, engineering and computer science, or arts and social sciences are selected to receive full salaries a three-year term. Dr. Hill says an impetus for the creation of the fellowships came witnessing the difficulty postdoctoral researchers had starting their careers, and from his desire to provide them with the “reach” they needed to succeed.

“I would see these people with PhDs, who had great ideas, but their careers were stuck because they were undervalued and underpaid. They couldn't properly do their work, they couldn’t support their family, and they incurred huge debts during their studies,” he says.

Since 2018, 11 fellows have benefited from Dr. Hill’s generosity, and many have received tenured positions at universities across North America. For Dr. Hill, one of the most rewarding aspects has been seeing the fellows engage on research projects or papers together.

“[The fellows] are always amazed by how much they learn from one another. They meet and talk about their work and discover their research areas intersect or inform each other’s,” he says. “Academics shouldn't be locked in a closet trying to do it all on their own. They need to open the doors and work together. It’s amazing to see that in action.”

While this isn’t the first time he has been honoured by his alma mater – he received an honorary degree in 1987 – for Dr. Hill, receiving the 2025 Dalhousie Golden Eagle Lifetime Achievement Award provides him with a sense of accomplishment.

“I wasn’t in medicine to help people. I was in medicine because it was fun and challenging. To have it acknowledged [by Dal] that maybe I wasn’t really that selfish to do what I like, and I made things better for a lot of people – it’s a recognition that, in fact, I did do something worthwhile,” he says.