CEOT features experts that you recognize covering the latest and most prevalent topics in the transplantation field. Learn more about our set of experts.

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Dr. Andrew Adams is a clinically active adult and pediatric abdominal transplant surgeon with research interests in translational transplant immunology and resource utilization after transplantation.  His interests are concentrated on the development of novel immunosuppression reagents and strategies, transplant tolerance, and xenotransplantation.

 

 

Dr. James Allan holds an A.B. (mcl) in Chemistry from Harvard College and an M.D. (mcl) from Harvard Medical School. He completed residencies in Surgery and Thoracic Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Transplantation Immunology at the Center for Transplantation Sciences of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Allan is on the active clinical staff in Thoracic Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, and is an NIH-funded principal investigator in large-animal models of lung transplantation, with a focus on tolerance induction and xenotransplantation. Dr. Allan is a Past-President of the American Society of Transplantation.

 

Dr. Agnes Azimzadeh received her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Immunology from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France (1992). Her post-doctoral training in xenotransplantation included multiple collaborations with Pr. Cazenave and Soulillou (1993-99). She then joined the laboratory of Richard Pierson at Vanderbilt University, before joining faculty in the Department of Surgery at University of Maryland Baltimore in 2002. She served as Councilor, Secretary-Treasurer, and was recently elected President-Elect, of the International Xenotransplantation Association (IXA). She was the Scientific Program Committee Chair for the last IXA meeting in Baltimore.

 

Dr. Nicholas Braus is a fellow in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

 

 

Dr. Anil Chandraker has academic interests in basic, translational and clinical areas of transplantation research. He serves as the overall PI on an NIH sponsored Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation Consortium examining the development and role of anti HLA antibodies in kidney and heart transplantation. Also he has clinical/translational research interests in BK nephropathy, anemia and genetics of transplantation. His basic research interest is focused primarily on T cell costimulatory pathways such as the B7-CD28/CTLA4 and PDL1-PD1 pathways and their role in tolerance and chronic allograft injury. He has mentored eighteen fellows in basic and clinical research and received research funding from the NIH, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the National Kidney Foundation. He has co-authored over a 120 original scientific articles, review articles and book chapters including contributing chapters to Harrisons, Brenner and Rectors The Kidney, AST Primer on Transplantation and ACP Medicine Textbook.

Dr. Matthew Cooper is the Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation at the Medstar Georgetown Transplant Institute and a Professor of Surgery at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.  He is actively involved in the AST and the ASTS and currently is the chairman of the upcoming American Transplant Congress in Seattle.  Dr. Cooper currently serves on the Board of Directors for the National Kidney Foundation, the National Kidney Registry, and the American Foundation for Donation and Transplant.  His clinical research interests include interventions for delayed graft function and increasing living donor opportunities through paired kidney exchange.

 

Dr. Duane Davis, MD, is the Executive Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Surgical Director of the Lung Transplant/ CTEPH programs at Florida Hospital. Previously, he was Professor of Surgery & Director of Transplantation at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Davis attended the UCLA School of Medicine; Residency training in General and Cardiothoracic Surgery at Duke University; fellowship in lung transplantation at Washington University and a MBA with Health Sector Management focus from the Fugua (Duke) School of Business. Dr. Davis’s has published over 400 journals and abstracts primarily focused on thoracic transplantation and is a past President of ISHLT.

 

Dr. Jonathan D’Cunha, MD, PhD is the Chief of The Division of Lung Transplant/Lung Failure, Surgical Director of Lung Transplantation, and the Surgical Director of ECMO at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Presbyterian Hospital. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Associate Program Director of Thoracic Surgery and the Vice Chairman of Research and Education at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery. Dr. D’Cunha studied molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before he earned his PhD and then MD at the Medical College of Wisconsin in a prestigious medical scientist training program. He then did his residency and fellowship at the University of Minnesota before he became an Assistant Professor of Surgery, Division of Thoracic and Foregut Surgery, Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota. Dr. D’Cunha’s research interests are novel therapeutics for non-small cell lung cancer, a broad based research platform in lung transplantation, and surgical education. Dr. D’Cunha is board certified in Cardiothoracic by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.

 

Dr. Thomas Egan, Professor of Surgery at UNC Chapel Hill, began the UNC lung transplant program in 1990. He published excellent results of bilateral lung transplant for CF. His research focused on transplanting lungs recovered after sudden death - uDCDD donors. Served as Chair of the UNOS Lung Allocation Subcommittee for 5 years, until Lung Allocation Score was introduced in the U.S. in 2005. Due to a disability, Dr. Egan stopped performing surgery in 2007. He acquired experience with human EVLP, and used EVLP to evaluate over 30 human lungs recovered after sudden death. Although some were suitable, none were transplanted.

 

Dr. Jean Emond is from Montreal and received his BA and MD from the University of Chicago.  Dr. Emond was a key member of the team at the University of Chicago that performed the first living donor liver transplant in 1989.  Over the past 25 years has trained dozens of liver surgeons and hepatologists who have gone on to make contributions in transplant centers throughout the world.   He has had a sustained academic career leading research efforts in liver donor liver transplantation and hepatobiliary oncology.  Dr. Emond is the President of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. 

 

 

Dr. David P. Foley, MD is an Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Transplantation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. His clinical focus is in adult and pediatric liver and kidney transplantation. His clinical research is focused on identifying risk factors and improving outcomes after kidney and liver transplantation using marginal organs including those from donation after circulatory death donors. His basic and translational research interests focus on identifying novel, cell-specific strategies to mitigate ischemia reperfusion injury in kidney and liver transplantation. He serves as Associate Editor for American Journal of Transplantation and Liver Transplantation. He also serves as Councilor-at-Large on the Board of Directors for the American Society of Transplantation.

Dr. O. H. Frazier’s interest in the field of cardiac support began in 1963 while in medical school, prompted by his mentor, legendary surgeon Dr. Michael E. DeBakey.  At the Texas Heart Institute, Dr. Frazier’s more than 50 years of experimental and clinical work has resulted in his own personal achievement of over 1200 LVAD device implantations and 1300 heart transplants.  Dr. Frazier’s pioneering work in the field of circulatory support has resulted in more than 40,000 LVADs being implanted in patients worldwide; the design of most of these devices having been conceived and/or developed in Dr. Frazier’s laboratory.

Dr. Jon Friedman, MD, is the Chief Medical Officer for Optum’s Population Health Solutions, and Complex Medical Conditions programs.  He has clinical oversight and responsibility for Transplantation, Chronic and End Stage Kidney Disease, Bariatric Surgery, Ventricular Assist Devices, Congenital Heart Disease, Spine/Joint Solutions and Cardiac Surgery.  He has been with Optum for 18 years.   He is Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Geriatric Medicine.Dr. Friedman is a Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation and received a Distinguished Service Award from AST in June 2016 for his efforts in supporting living kidney donation.

 

Dr. Robert Gaston is Medical Director for CTI Clinical Trials and Consulting, Inc, in Covington, Kentucky.  Prior to joining CTI in 2017, Dr. Gaston was Vice President for Transplant Services and Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Institute at UAB, where he held the Robert G. Luke Endowed Chair in Transplant Nephrology. He is a graduate of the University of Arkansas (BA) and St. Louis University School of Medicine (MD), and has been involved in clinical investigation since 1990, with over 300 authored or coauthored publications.  Dr. Gaston was President of the American Society of Transplantation (AST) in 2011-12.

Dr. David Goldberg, MD, MSCE, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Goldberg is a transplant hepatologist  whose research focuses on the epidemiology of end-stage liver disease, access to transplant waiting lists, and improving organ donation rates and organ utilization. He is the co-PI for an ongoing clinical trial, the THINKER trial, investigating the safety and efficacy of transplanting kidneys from donors with Hepatitis C into patients on the kidney transplant waitlist who are hepatitis C negative.

 

Dr. Melissa Greenwald is the Director of the Division of Transplantation at HRSA.  She is an internist and graduate of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda MD.  Melissa started her Federal Government career at the FDA in 2000, where she became involved in tissue and cell transplantation regulation in 2001.  Because of her expertise in donor screening and testing, she has been actively involved with the organ donation and transplantation community since 2004.

 

Dr. Shelley Hall is the Chief of Transplant Cardiology, MCS and Heart Failure at Baylor Dallas. Dr. Hall is nationally recognized in the national transplant community. She serves as the UNOS representative for Region 4 on the National Thoracic Committee, participates on the Thoracic COP of AST and serves as HF Chair for the Texas Chapter of the ACC.  She received her medical degree at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, and remained there for  Residency and Fellowship. Her research passions include expanded donor utilization, newer VADs and better HF care.

 

Dr. Charles Hoopes is a medical graduate of Duke University and hold graduate degrees in anthropology and public health (University of California/Berkeley).  He completed thoracic surgery training at the University of Michigan and held faculty positions at UCSF and the University of Kentucky (Jason Alexander Gill Professor in Thoracic Surgery).  He is currently section Chief of Thoracic Transplantation and Co-Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Institute at the University of Alabama.

 

Dr. Bertram L Kasiske, MD, FACP, received his medical degree from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. He completed Internal Medicine residency, and fellowship training in Nephrology, at Hennepin County Medical Center. He is former Deputy Director of the USRDS, former Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, and former Co-Chair of KDIGO. Currently he is Director of Nephrology at Hennepin County Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He is the Principal Investigator for a National Institutes of Health grant to study long-term effects of kidney donation. He is the Director of the SRTR.

 

Dr. Shaf Keshavjee is a Thoracic surgeon and Director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program. He is Surgeon-in-Chief, James Wallace McCutcheon Chair in Surgery, UHN. He is Professor Division of Thoracic Surgery and Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, and Vice Chair for Innovation, Dept Surgery, University of Toronto. His research interest is in lung injury related to transplantation. His current work involves the study of strategies to repair organs organs for transplantation.Dr. Keshavjee has received numerous awards for contributions to medicine including: the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the Order of Ontario and Officer of the Order of Canada.

 

Dr. Liviu Klein is director of the Mechanical Circulatory Support. He specializes in treating patients with heart failure and arrhythmias, including patients before and after heart transplants. He has expertise in cardiac resynchronization and mechanical therapies such as ventricular assist devices for heart failure. In his research, he studies the epidemiology of heart failure in women, including those at risk for sudden cardiac death. With colleagues in the department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at UCSF, he is developing new technologies for monitoring and treating patients with cardiovascular disease (including heart failure), and for those who use ventricular assist devices.

 

Dr. Jon Kobashigawa, MD, is Associate Director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Director of Advanced Heart Disease and Director of the Heart Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai. In addition, he holds the DSL/Thomas D. Gordon Chair in Heart Transplantation Medicine. He is board certified in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease. He also is a clinical professor of medicine and cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Kobashigawa specializes in heart transplantation, advanced heart failure, cardiac catheterization, athletic heart syndrome, sudden cardiac death and valvular heart disease.

 

Dr. Darren Malinoski, MD is the Chief of the Surgical-Critical Care Section at the Portland VA, and a Professor at OHSU. Malinoski's research focus is organ donation, including the incorporation of Donor Management Goals (DMGs) which serve as guidelines for donor management and provide a framework for research. Malinoski is the physician leader of the UNOS DMG workgroup, which launched a Web-Registry of donor and recipient elements in 2012. Malinoski received funding in 2016 for the Donor Management Research Initiative to facilitate the establishment of evidence-based standards for donor management in order to increase the quality and quantity of transplantable organs.   

 

Dr. Roslyn B Mannon, a past-president of AST, is a Professor of Medicine and Director of Research for the Comprehensive Transplant Institute at UAB. A graduate of Duke University Medical School, she completed Internal Medicine and Nephrology training at Duke. Her laboratory research focuses on mechanisms of chronic graft injury using in vitro and rodent models of kidney transplantation and CNI nephrotoxicity. She is site PI for the Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation, and a member of the CTOT Steering Committee. She has published over 100 peer reviewed publications on the mechanisms of chronic allograft injury and therapeutics in transplantation.

 

Dr. Arthur J. Matas is a Professor of Surgery at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.  Dr. Matas earned his medical degree in 1972 at the University of Manitoba, College of Medicine in Winnipeg, Canada. He did his surgical residency and transplantation fellowship at the University of Minnesota Hospitals, where he was actively involved in clinical and laboratory research. Dr. Matas has authored or coauthored over 700 articles and book chapters and his research has been presented at numerous national and international meetings.

 

 

Dr. Ulf Meier-Kriesche. Physician, board certified in Nephrology and specialized in Transplantation with 20 years clinical practice experience in the US, Italy and Germany. Seven years in the industry with experience in Medical Affairs, Drug Development and Outcomes Research in Nephrology, Lupus, Lupus Nephritis, Transplantation, Gastroenterology, Oncology, and Dermatology. 170 scientific trend-setting publications in peer reviewed journals and over 200 scientific presentations worldwide. Excellent interpersonal and leadership skills. Established track record in building high performing teams and acting as "change agent" through challenging transitions.

 

Dr. David Neujahr is the Medical Director of the Emory Lung Transplant Program. Dr. Neujahr’s primary interests relate to the care of patients undergoing lung transplantation.  His research has focused on lung biomarkers of injury which predict the subsequent development of chronic lung allograft dysfuction.  Dr. Neujahr and team have shown that gastroesophageal reflux and T cell activation are highly correlated in transplant recipients.  He is also heavily invested in increasing access to lung transplantation as well as graduate medical education in advanced lung disease.  Dr. Neujahr sees patients in the Emory Transplant Center and at Emory University Hospital.

 

Dr. Richard Pierson has been working in the field of xenotransplantation for 30 years.  He and his research team work primarily in translational preclinical models, where they study the remaining barriers to transplanting pig organs into humans, and to accomplishing durable peripheral immunoregulatory tolerance.  He is a past president of the International Xenotransplantation Association, and current chair of IXA's Ethics Committee.

 

Dr. Axel Rahmel completed his medical studies at Georg-August-University of Göttingen in 1987, then joined a scholarship of Max Planck Society as a fellow in 1989 at the Institute for Experimental Medicine. He trained in internal medicine and cardiology at University of Muenster and later at University of Leipzig. In Leipzig he was in charge of the heart failure/heart transplant program taking care of patients before and after heart transplantation. In 2005 he was appointed Medical Director of Eurotransplant International Foundation, organization responsible for organ allocation in eight European countries. Since 2014 he is Medical Director of DSO German organ procurement organization.

 

Dr. Jesse Schold, PhD, M.Stat., M.Ed. is an Full Staff member in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences in the Health Outcomes Research and Clinical Epidemiology Section and Director of Outcomes Research in Kidney Transplantation and Director for the Center for Populations Health Research at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. He is currently an AST Board member and actively involved in research and policy in the field of transplantation.

 

Dr. Palak Shah directs the Heart Failure Research program at the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute. Dr. Shah’s clinical interests include advanced cardiomyopathies, mechanical support and cardiac transplantation. He completed residency and Chief Residency in Internal Medicine at Georgetown University. During his Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship at George Washington University he received a Masters in Clinical and Translational Research and was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha honors society.  He completed Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant training at the University of Michigan. His research interests are in mechanical circulatory support and cardiac transplantation; specifically genomic sequencing to discover novel biomarkers of disease.

Mr. Brian Shephard, UNOS’ Chief Executive Officer, leads the efforts of more than 350 UNOS staff to ensure that the nation’s transplant network efficiently and fairly serves the needs of transplant candidates and recipients, living donors and donor family members, and transplant professionals. Shepard joined UNOS in 2010 and has served as CEO since 2012. He has focused on building a culture of innovation, improved technology services, and expanded use of data for quality improvement. Shepard previously served 15 years in Virginia state government, capped by a term as Director of Policy in Governor Tim Kaine’s administration.

 

Dr. Michael Smith, MD is Chief of General Thoracic Surgery andSurgical Director of LungTransplantation at Norton ThoracicInstitute,St. Joseph’s Hospital. He is a board certifiedcardiothoracic surgeon.Dr. Smith’s expertise includes lung disease, lung transplantation, lung cancer and esophageal disease. He is a member of ISHLT, WTSA, Society of ThoracicSurgeons and General Thoracic SurgicalClub. Dr. Smith received his medical degree fromthe University of California, San Francisco. He completed his residency in general surgery and his fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine. His research interests include: lung transplantation, esophageal disease and lung cancer.

 

Dr. Mark Stegall is a transplant surgeon and researcher in the Departments of Surgery and Immunology at Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN where he holds the James C. Masson Professorship of Surgery Research.  His research interests include mechanisms of alloantibody production and the causes of long-term renal allograft damage.  He is the ASTS co-chair of the Transplant Therapeutics Consortium.  He also is the Director of the Multicenter Transplant Alliance, a multicenter clinical research consortium.

 

Mr. Darren Stewart is a Senior Research Scientist in the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Research department and holds a master’s degree in statistics.   He has 19 years of experience as an applied statistician, the past 9 in organ transplantation and previously in banking and aerospace.  He has worked extensively with the OPTN Kidney Transplantation Committee and his current research interests include optimizing deceased donor kidney utilization; evaluating the effectiveness of organ allocation and identifying ways to improve it; and measuring equity in allocation.  He has authored several publications in transplant journals and has presented at numerous transplant conferences.

 

Dr. Joseph Tector, M.D., Ph.D. is a leading U.S. liver transplant surgeon with clinical expertise in multivisceral and small bowel transplantation. He received his undergraduate degree from Indiana University in 1987, his doctorate at Saint Louis University in 1992 and completed his general surgery training at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, in 1999. He completed his fellowship in abdominal transplant at the University of Miami in 2001. Dr. Tector, who distinguished himself as an externally independent and NIH-funded surgeon-scientist with a nationally recognized xenotransplantation research program at Indiana, is now the Director of the University of Alabama’s new Xenotransplantation program.

 

Dr. Jeffrey Teuteberg is the Section Chief of Heart Failure, Cardiac Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support at Stanford University and is the President-Elect of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation.  His clinical research interests include right ventricular function, outcomes after mechanical circulatory support and novel immunosuppression.

 

 

Dr. Nicole Turgeon is a Professor in the Department of Surgery at Emory University.  Her clinical and research interests are in adult and pediatric renal transplantation, pancreatic transplantation, laparoscopic liver donor nephrectomy, islet cell transplantation and outcomes analysis of transplant recipients.

 

 

Dr. Martin R. Zamora, M.D., is Professor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine and Medical Director of Lung Transplantation, at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.  He helped to establish the Lung Transplant Program at UCHSC and became Medical Director in 1991.  He's taught numerous fellows and trained many lung transplant fellows, several of which have gone on to lead their own transplant programs.  Dr. Zamora remains active in clinical, translational and basic research regarding the role of viral infections in lung transplant outcomes and the prevention and management of cytomegalovirus infection following solid organ transplantation.