2023 Board of Directors Election
Voting for the AST Board of Directors will open on April 24, 2023. All eligible voters have been sent emails with directions on how to place votes. If you did not receive this email, please check your spam folder. To ensure email delivery, add vote@simplyvoting.com to your accepted sender list. The online voting site will close at 11:59 pm ET on May 29, 2023. Election results will be announced during the AST Town Hall on Monday, June 5, 2023. If you have questions about voting, please review our frequently asked questions. Members will vote for President-Elect, Secretary, and three Councilors-at-Large, and will vote to accept or reject four bylaw revisions recommended by the Council.
Jon Kobashigawa, MD, FAST
Nicole Turgeon, MD, FACS
Christopher Blosser, MD, FAST
John Friedewald, MD, FAST
Luke Preczewski
Matthew Cooper, MD, FACS, FAST
John Bucuvalas, MD, FAST, FAASLD
Shelley Hall, MD, FACC, FHFSA, FAST
President-Elect
Jon Kobashigawa, MD, FAST
Jon Kobashigawa, MD, is a graduate of Stanford University where he received his BS. He received his MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and completed his Internal Medicine Residency and Cardiology Fellowship at the UCLA Medical Center. At the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Dr Jon Kobashigawa is the DSL/Thomas D. Gordon Professor of Medicine and serves as the Director of the Advanced Heart Disease Division and Director of the Heart Transplant Program at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is a past President of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), past ISHLT program chair, past chair of the ACC/AHA Committee on Heart Failure and Transplantation, past member of UNOS committees and currently on the Board of Directors for the American Society of Transplantation (AST).
Dr. Kobashigawa is recognized internationally as a leader in the heart transplant field. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation and the American Journal of Transplantation. He has been recognized for his prolific work and contributions to the field of transplantation with several awards, including the 2023 ISHLT Lifetime Achievement Award, 2020 AST Award for Senior Achievement in Clinical Transplantation and the 2018 Paul I. Terasaki Clinical Science Award. He has also been instrumental in the development and publication of national practice guidelines and have served on committees at the NIH, UNOS, AHA, ACC, ISHLT, as well as the AST. Finally, Dr. Kobashigawa designed, organized and chaired 15 national and international consensus conferences to address key issues in transplantation. The resulting consensus statements have helped not only to move the discourse forward, but also to further the development of needed guidelines in these critical areas.
His service to the American Society of Transplantation spans over 25 years. In addition to serving on the AST Board of Directors, he represented the AST on the Executive Program Committee of the 2014 World Transplant Congress and served as a member of the ATC Program Committee, Chair of the AST Thoracic and Critical Care Community of Practice, Chair of the AST Education Committee, and Steering Committee member of the Cutting Edge of Organ Transplantation (CEOT). He has also been an advocate for national legislative issues in organ transplantation as well as promoting collegial involvement of various COPs.
Secretary
Nicole Turgeon, MD, FACS
Nicole Turgeon, MD, FACS, is a board-certified abdominal transplant surgeon and serves as the Transplant Director for the Abdominal Transplant Center, a clinical partnership between Ascension Seton and UT Health Austin. She specializes in kidney and pancreas transplantation. Additionally, Dr. Turgeon is a professor and serves as the Chief of the Division of Transplant Surgery for the Dell Medical School Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care.
Dr. Turgeon earned her medical degree from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and her bachelor’s in biology from Brown University. She completed a residency in general surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and a fellowship in multi-organ abdominal transplant surgery at the University of Wisconsin.
Dr. Turgeon currently serves as Chief of Abdominal Transplant Surgery at Dell Seton Medical Center. She joined the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin to initiate and build an abdominal transplant program. In her previous role as a member of the Emory University faculty, she was an active kidney and pancreas transplant surgeon, researcher, teacher, and mentor to undergraduates, medical students, residents, and fellows. She served as Director of the Living Donor Program, which included the development of Emory’s nationally prominent role in the National Kidney Registry paired donor exchange program. She was also Surgical Director of the Kidney Transplant Program at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She has been actively engaged in organ donation efforts and served as an Assistant Medical Director at Lifelink of Georgia Organ Procurement Organization. She has a strong commitment to serving the transplant community through the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) regional and national committee participation and has been a member of the UNOS Kidney Committee for more than 8 years, completing her tenure as Chair. She is currently Chair of the UNOS Policy Oversight Committee and has served on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Transplantation. She has also served as an investigator and principal investigator on numerous grants funded by the NIH and other organizations. Her academic interests include organ donation and utilization, adult and pediatric renal transplantation, pancreatic transplantation, and HIV transplantation.
Councilors-At-Large
Christopher Blosser, MD, FAST
I would like to be your AST Board of Directors Councilor-at-Large because I believe that I am uniquely suited to help lead the AST and transplant community into the future.
I am a transplant nephrologist and physician-scientist at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital with extensive training, clinical practice and research at academic health systems across the U.S. (i.e. Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Washington). I also have significant leadership experience that incorporates organizational, technological and financial expertise as director of transplant-related interdisciplinary clinical programs, a research center, and multiple AST teams.
I became a member of AST in 2008, and have served AST through many leadership roles since, including as Founding member & Executive Committee of Trainees and Young Faculty Community of Practice (2010-14), Lead organizer & Workgroup Facilitator of AST-sponsored Consensus Conference on Kidney Paired Donation (2011-12), Chair of the Kidney Pancreas Advisory Council (2013-14), Founding member, Transplant & Immunology Research Network (2013-16), Co-Chair of Grants Review Committee (2014-16), and member of the Public Policy Committee (2019-Present). Additionally, I have been an AJT Associate Editor since 2014. In 2018, I established the AJT Editorial Fellowship with support of AST and ASTS. The year-long fellowship has grown from 4 to 11 (10 clinical track and 1 basic science track) fellows over 5 years and is a pillar of AJT.
I also have unique personal experience with kidney and transplant-related healthcare in previously caring for my mother and aunt who experienced ESKD from ADPKD. They each lived on dialysis before receiving kidney transplants and experiencing the risks and benefits of transplant. These personal experiences have led me to value my relationships with patients and commit to improve peoples’ lives through high quality healthcare, research, education and advocacy.
In 2021, I founded the UW-based Center for Innovations in Cancer & Transplant (CICT), which includes a national patient-level bioregistry of organ transplant recipients with cancer and a personalized consult clinic, the Cancer and Organ Transplant Clinic (COTC) at Fred Hutch Cancer Center. COTC provides integrated care to patients with cancer before and after organ transplant. The CICT performs multidimensional collaborative research regarding the risks, mechanisms and outcomes of cancer in organ transplant recipients, with a focus on immunotherapies.
I believe that I have an obligation to use my abilities, experience and vision to serve others and I commit to representing you to improve our shared transplant community and patient lives.
John Friedewald, MD, FAST
I am a transplant nephrologist working in Chicago and Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where I have spent most of my career. My service to the AST started on the Kidney-Pancreas Advisory Council in 2012. I rose to be the co-chair and eventually the chair of that council in 2014. In 2015, the Kidney-Pancreas Advisory Council evolved into the Kidney and Pancreas Community of Practice. I was the inaugural Chair of that COP and have stayed involved with the KPCOP ever since in a variety of capacities. I helped to develop the Transplant Nephrology Core Curriculum in partnership with the ASN. Aligned with my interest in organ allocation policy, I have worked with the AST and other societies to align OPO metrics and expand the use of hepatitis C positive organs. I was honored to be part of the first class inducted as Fellows of the AST in 2015. I served on the CEOT 2021 planning committee. I was named Co-Chair elect of the 2022 ATC meeting, am Co-Chair of the upcoming ATC 2023 meeting, and will be Chair of the meeting in 2024.
My contributions to the field of transplantation have been in several areas. Clinically, I have focused on improving access to transplant for highly sensitized and incompatible transplant recipients. In my work locally, with UNOS, and with AST I have helped to develop and expand access to kidney paired donation and desensitization therapies. On a broader scale working with UNOS, AST, ASN and the NKF, my efforts to improve organ allocation helped usher in the new Kidney Allocation System in 2014. I continue to do research and participate in the ongoing efforts to reduce organ discards and improve access to transplant for patients.
My research focuses on developing improved biomarkers for personalized care management of transplant recipients. Through the work of our research teams, we were able to develop a non-invasive biomarker for rejection that was successfully translated into an available clinical test. I continue to work on developing novel and improved biomarkers to help prolong graft survival and empower patients and clinicians to make more informed decisions. I look forward to the opportunity to continue to serve the AST with my time, expertise, and passion for improving transplant outcomes. I also promise to bring my sense of humor and collegiality every day to make the AST a society where we can all enjoy our time together while we work to improve the field of transplantation.
Luke Preczewski
Luke Preczewski is the Vice President of the Miami Transplant Institute, a joint initiative between Jackson Health System and the University of Miami. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive transplant centers in the United States. In his role, which he has held since 2016, he oversees the operations of adult and pediatric thoracic and abdominal service lines, including hundreds of staff and budgets in excess of $50M. Prior to the Miami Transplant Institute, he has worked in senior leadership roles for the transplant centers at the University of California, Davis and for Northwestern Medicine.
Luke currently serves as the chair of the Public Policy Committee for the AST, a committee he has served on since 2019 (and previously from 2014-2016). He has previously served the AST in multiple capacities over the years, including chairing the Transplant Administration and Quality Community of Practice and serving on the CEOT Planning Committee, Medical Directors Task Force, Liver Redistricting Task Force, and other efforts. Beyond the AST, Luke has served on committees and work groups for the OPTN, SRTR, and other prominent organizations.
His professional interests include transplant-related aspects of management and leadership, finance and health economics, ethics, human subjects protection, and public policy.
Matthew Cooper, MD, FACS, FAST
I serve as the Chief of Transplantation, Director of Solid Organ Transplant and Professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children’s Wisconsin in Milwaukee. My primary research is ischemia/reperfusion following kidney transplantation and interventions for DGF. My passion and my mission, however, is increasing organ utilization by removing disincentives and promoting innovation and policy changes to ensure we offer the Gift of Life to all in need.
I have been actively involved in the AST for over 15 years and represent one of few dual AST/ASTS members. I am regularly engaged in the KPCOP and LDCOP. Soon after joining, I was immediately invited to chair the LD Mortality Workgroup in surveying members regarding their preparedness for a living donor mortality resulting in a highly referenced AJT manuscript utilized by numerous programs. I’ve served on the KPCOP Executive Committee and founded its Mentoring subcommittee. An advocate for pancreas transplantation and appreciating little ‘P’ discussion and projects in the KPCOP, I spearheaded the development of the Pancreas subcommittee with now numerous publications, calls for advocacy, and most recently, the successful planning and execution of a national workshop to increase solid organ pancreas transplantation. Beginning in 2012, I served for 6 years on the ATC Planning and Executive committee, chairing the team in 2018. I invited collaboration with donation and transplant colleagues at all levels and patterned my personal leadership style towards a goal of engagement and inclusiveness. I’m honored to currently serve on the AST Circle of Excellence Governance Council and ensured my new institution was quick to join. I also serve on the Planning Committee for the AST Fellows Symposium on Transplantation having been recognized for my sincere efforts in mentorship and education.
I’ve chaired a successful Consensus Conference to Decrease Organ Discards which included a diverse AST presence and representation from HRSA, UNOS, CMS, NIH, private payers, and patients. Projects followed including evaluating kidney allograft biopsies, a UNOS Task Force to facilitate allocation for high risk for discard organs, and substantive dialogue with CMS to examine reimbursement. In addition to serving as President, I’ve also served as co-chair for a UNOS Systems Performance Improvement Workgroup - a national representative group of physicians, surgeons, OPOs, and community thought leaders identifying interventions to improve donation and transplant delivery systems and increase organs transplanted while decreasing disparities and discards. I’ve served on the Boards of the NKF, NKR, DLA, AFDT and IPITA.
John Bucuvalas, MD, FAST, FAASLD
I am a pediatric transplant hepatologist, Professor and Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs in the Department of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. I have been an active member of the AST since 1999. I have been an invited speaker for symposia and the winter meeting and as in program planning and have served as both a leader and contributor within Liver and Intestine Community of Practice (LICOP) as well as the Pediatric Community of Practice. In 2018, I was elected by the LICOP membership as Member-At-Large of the LICOP Executive Committee. In this position, I advocated for the pediatric transplant community, but also worked to bridge existing gaps between pediatric and adult transplantation. I leveraged my role in LICOP to create opportunities for others efforts to facilitate networking and enhance recognition for more junior faculty. Working together with LICOP leadership, and Dr. Jennifer Lai, I helped move forward a new mentoring initiative, in support of the overarching mission to remove barriers to contribution to the field. I helped to guide LICOP’s research and advocacy initiatives and have mentored several upcoming young transplant professionals within our community. These efforts culminated in one of my proudest accomplishments, the nomination and receipt of the 2021 AST mentoring award.
I am board certified in pediatric gastroenterology and have a certificate of added qualification in transplant Hepatology, completing my fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. I have published broadly on long term outcomes with a focus on allograft health following liver transplantation, adherence and more recently social determinants of outcome. I have established strong ties with the research arm of the solid organ transplant community through the NIH and the Immune Tolerance Network and have had leadership roles in the Studies of Pediatric Liver Transplantation (SPLIT) and UNOS. I served on the ABIM/ABP inaugural transplant hepatology subcommittee, and as Associate Editor for Liver Transplantation and Clinical Liver Disease. Along the path, I was fortunate to learn improvement science and collaborate with designers, researchers in network science and leaders in operations and management research. The diversity of these collaborations helped shape my perspective and accelerate learning.
Shelley Hall, MD, FACC, FHFSA, FAST
I am board certified in heart failure/cardiac transplant and the Chief of Transplant Cardiology, Mechanical Circulatory Support and Advanced Heart Failure at Baylor Dallas, part of Baylor Scott and White. Ever since my first ATC, I have become a strong believer in the AST mission. I have attended ATC yearly ever since. I attend nearly every CEOT and actively worked to expand cardiothoracic involvement. I joined the TCCCOP immediately and rapidly rose to become the Chair only 8 months after I started as Co-Chair in 2018 due to the departure of the acting Chair. My goal as a member all the way to current past Chair of the TCCCOP has been to expand awareness of the organization amongst the cardiothoracic community and recruit more involvement. I have been active every year in Consensus Conferences (including Biomarkers in Heart and Renal Transplant (cochair), ALTA Consensus Conference, Cardiovascular Disease in Liver Transplant Consensus Conference, Heart/Kidney Consensus Conference, Outcomes Metrics for Heart Transplant Consensus Conference, Heart/Liver Consensus Conference and our current AMR Consensus Conference). I work diligently to bring early career cardiologists into this space, pushed to revitalize our critical care working group and created social media ambassador and mentoring work groups.
Outside the AST I am active in several other transplant organizations including ISHLT and UNOS. I chaired the HF/Transplant Academy at the 2018 ISHLT meeting and co-chaired the Donor Management and Allocation Consensus document recently published. I have been active with UNOS for over a decade starting as Region 4 rep in 2012-2014 and again in 2017-2020, the Chair of the Cardiac Subcommittee and the Chair of the inaugural start of the Cardiac Committee in 2020. I have and continue to participate in several OPTN/UNOS Ad Hoc committees including the Systems Performance Committee and the Multi-Organ Transplantation Committee. I have just been elected Incoming Chancellor of Region 4 and will start my service on the MPSC July 2023. I have helped to build cardiothoracic representation at the Texas Transplant Society and the Texas Medical Association.
Finally I formed a new organization, Women in Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support to provide connection and support for women in our space.
In every organization, I strive to leave it stronger and larger than when I entered, engaging all my colleagues to get involved and be part of the process whether it is science, mentoring, advocacy or research.