Since 1992, Ilya Yemets was the first in Ukraine and in the post-Soviet space to successfully operate on infants with complex heart defects, to implement plastic surgery on heart valves in young children (without the use of artificial materials). For the first time in the world, he introduced surgical treatment of prenatally diagnosed complex congenital heart defects in the first hours of life in newborns using autologous umbilical cord blood instead of donor blood. He established a school of newborn cardiology and cardiac surgery in Ukraine. He is the author of more than 250 scientific papers.