2021 Keynote Speaker Amy P. Abernethy, M.D., Ph.D. is an oncologist and internationally recognized clinical data expert and clinical researcher.  As the Principal Deputy Commissioner of Food and Drugs, Dr. Abernethy helps oversee FDA’s day-to-day functioning and directs special and high-priority cross-cutting initiatives that impact the regulation of drugs, medical devices, tobacco and food. As acting Chief Information Officer, she oversees FDA’s data and technical vision, and its execution.  She has held multiple executive roles at Flatiron Health and was professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, where she ran the Center for Learning Health Care and the Duke Cancer Care Research Program.  Dr. Abernethy received her M.D. at Duke University, where she did her internal medicine residency, served as chief resident, and completed her hematology/oncology fellowship. She received her Ph.D. from Flinders University, her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and is boarded in palliative medicine.

Dr. Benjamin A. Adam, MD, FRCPC is an Anatomical Pathologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Alberta. He completed medical school and residency training in Anatomical Pathology at the University of Alberta, followed by subspecialty training in renal pathology at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, cardiothoracic pathology at Toronto General Hospital, and transplantation pathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. His research is focused on molecular transplantation pathology, including the use of cutting-edge gene expression technologies to diagnose and assess allograft rejection, infection, and ex vivo perfusion-related injury and repair. He has authored over 35 peer-reviewed journal articles and traveled throughout the world to present and lecture on the topics of his research and clinical expertise.

Upton D. Allen, is a Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. He is Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). Dr. Allen is a Senior Associate Scientist in the Research Institute, Hospital for Sick Children. His primary appointment is with the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Paediatrics at the Hospital for Sick Children.  He is cross-appointed as a professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto.  Dr. Allen is interim director of the Transplant and Regenerative Medicine Centre, Hospital for Sick Children. He is well recognized nationally and internationally for his work in the field of EBV-related post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder (PTLD). He has led numerous initiatives in the area of transplant infectious diseases. He has had numerous invited lectures internationally, visiting professorships, scientific publications, several book chapters, scientific abstracts and several peer-reviewed research grants.

Sandra Amaral, MD, MHS is the Medical Director of the Kidney Transplant Program and the Hand Transplant Program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology.   Dr. Amaral leads several NIH-funded studies focused on kidney transplant access and outcomes. She is the principal investigator (PI) of U-REAACT, a randomized clinical trial testing text messaging and behavioral economic incentives to promote treatment adherence in transplanted youth. She is co- PI of VIRTUUS, an international cohort study to validate urinary biomarker signals associated with rejection and infections in children with kidney transplants. She is also co-PI of the REACH study which is focused on reducing disparities in access to transplant for youth and adults.   Dr. Amaral serves on the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology (ASPN) Council and is currently vice chair of the Vascular Composite Allograft Committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing. 

2021 Keynote Speaker Dr. John Beigel is at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He attended the Medical College of Ohio, complete residency at the University of Cincinnati, a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine at the National Institutes of Health and a fellowship in Infectious Disease at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Since completing fellowship, his research interests are primarily focused around clinical research and therapeutics in influenza and other emerging infectious diseases. He has been at the NIH since 2000 (except for one year venture in the biotechnology industry). He has led a portfolio of several multi-center international, treatment studies for influenza (including plasma therapy and combination antivirals), and most recently has led NIAID’s Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT) for advancing therapeutics for COVID-19. His current position is Associate Director for Clinical Research within NIAID’s Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Roy Bloom graduated from University of Witwatersrand Medical School, completed a residency at Albert Einstein Medical Center, followed by nephrology fellowship training at Harvard Medical School and University of Pennsylvania. He is Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Medical Director of its Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program. Dr Bloom is currently a member of the AST Board of Directors. He has served on AST Committees related to patient care, education and practice improvement. He has been a member of various AST, KDIGO and KDOQI Work Groups. He has co-chaired the AST/ASN Transplant Course and is an AST/ASN Transplant Nephrology Core Curriculum faculty member. Dr. Bloom serves on the Cutting Edge in Organ Transplantation meeting planning committee. He has co-authored almost 200 publications. He is an associate editor for the American Journal of Kidney Diseases. Research interests include transplantation viruses, clinical immunosuppression, non-invasive diagnostic tests and post-transplant outcomes.

Emily A. Blumberg, MD is a Professor of Medicine and a member of the ID Division at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is the Program Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program and the Director of Transplant Infectious Diseases. She has held numerous leadership roles, including serving as the President of the American Society of Transplantation from 2019-2020, Chair of the IDSA Training Program Directors Committee and of the IDSA Medical Scholars program, Chair of the UNOS Disease Transmission Advisory Committee, and Vice-Chair of the HHS Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability.  Her research focuses on viral infections in transplant recipients and donor derived infections.

2021 Keynote Speaker Atul Butte, MD, PhD is the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor and inaugural Director of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (bchsi.ucsf.edu) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Butte is also the Chief Data Scientist for the entire University of California Health System, with 20 health professional schools, 6 medical schools, 5 academic medical centers, 10 hospitals, and over 1000 care delivery sites. Dr. Butte has been continually funded by NIH for 20 years, is an inventor on 24 patents, and has authored over 200 publications, with research repeatedly featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Wired Magazine. Dr. Butte was elected into the National Academy of Medicine in 2015, and in 2013, he was recognized by the Obama Administration as a White House Champion of Change in Open Science for promoting science through publicly available data. Dr. Butte is also a founder of three investor-backed data-driven companies: Personalis (IPO, 2019), providing medical genome sequencing services, Carmenta (acquired by Progenity, 2015), discovering diagnostics for pregnancy complications, and NuMedii, finding new uses for drugs through open molecular data. Dr. Butte trained in Computer Science at Brown University, worked as a software engineer at Apple and Microsoft, received his MD at Brown University, trained in Pediatrics and Pediatric Endocrinology at Children's Hospital Boston, then received his PhD from Harvard Medical School and MIT.

Dr. Darshana Dadhania is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and is the Medical Director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital-WCM. She received her Master of Science in Clinical Investigation in 2009. She has served as the site-PI for CTOT-04 and CTOT-03 trials and is a multi-PI for North East Consortium for transplant outcomes in APOL1 risk variant kidney recipients –APOLLO-6. Her research has focused on the development of noninvasive biomarkers associated with immune and virus mediated graft injury and biomarkers prognostic of long-term graft function.  As a multi-PI, she is collaborating with investigators at Cornell University to study the utility of urine cell-free DNA to evaluate infection related graft damage using metagenomic sequencing.  She is the past Chair of the AST Kidney Pancreas Community of Practice and has chaired a number of consensus conferences focused on long-term graft outcomes.

Christopher Ensor, PharmD, FAST, FCCP is an international thought leader in complex immunologic challenges with a focus on precision medicine and novel therapeutic strategies for antibody mediated rejection (AMR) and chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD) in Thoracic Transplantation. I maintain a practice with the Advanced Lung Diseases programs at AdventHealth. My research focuses on novel therapeutic strategies and outcomes after thoracic transplantation, including precision medicine approaches. I have introduced two first-in-field therapies for AMR after lung transplantation: the proteasome inhibitor carfilzomib and the CD38 antagonist daratumumab.

Christine S. Falk, PhD., is full professor for Transplant Immunology and director of the Institute of Transplant Immunology at Hannover Medical School (MHH). She focusses on mechanisms of ischemia/reperfusion injury and consequences for innate and adaptive immunity, especially tissue-resident T and NK cells in the context of lung, heart and kidney transplantation. She graduated as PhD at the Institute of Immunology at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, in the field of tumor immunology and continued to work on T and NK cell recognition of solid tumors as postdoc fellow at the Institute of Molecular Immunology, Helmholtz Centre Munich. In 2004, she received her Venia Legendi at LMU for Human Immunology. 2006-2010, she worked at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany, as group leader of the Research Group “Immune Monitoring” with a strong interest in the improvement of cancer immunotherapy by understanding the mechanisms involved in treatment resistance.  

Maryjane Farr, MD is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Associate Professor of Cardiology and Medical Director of the Adult Heart Transplant Program at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She is a graduate of Barnard College (BA’89), Columbia College of P&S (MD’98) and completed her Advanced Heart Failure/Transplant Fellowship at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (’05).  Dr. Farr was the Director of Clinical Trials in Heart Failure and Transplantation at Columbia from 2007-12, obtained an NIH training grant to complete a Master's of Science at the Mailman School of Public Health (MS’12), and received the Shorin Silverstein Research in Transplantation award for 2012-14.  In addition to running a high-volume heart transplant program, Dr. Farr is the author of >150 papers and abstracts related to heart failure, transplantation, and mechanical circulatory support. Her specific areas of interest are in donor and recipient selection, primary graft failure and long-term survival. Dr. Farr has held leadership roles in transplant, including heart subcommittee chair of the UNOS Thoracic Committee, member of the UNOS Membership and Professional Standards Committee, Associate Councilor to Region 9, and was recently appointed to the New York State Transplant Council and Certificate of Need Committee. 

Dr. Sandy Feng is Professor of Surgery in Residence at the University of California San Francisco and Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Surgery.  She is a transplant surgeon performing liver, kidney and pancreas transplants. In her research, Dr. Feng studies tolerance, the ability for a transplant recipient to maintain normal organ function with minimal or even no immunosuppression.  With generous, long-standing funding from the National Institutes of Health, she has led several multi-center clinical trials studying spontaneous operational tolerance and tolerance induction in both adult and pediatric liver transplant recipients.  Dr. Feng has held multiple leadership positions in key societies. She has organized multiple national conferences addressing issues critical to the transplantation community.  An author of over 150 papers, she currently serves on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and is Editor-in-Chief for the American Journal of Transplantation.

David P. Foley, MD is the Folkert O. Belzer Chair in Surgery and Professor and Chair of the Division of Transplantation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.  He serves as the Surgical Director of the Liver Transplant Program at UW Health and William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital and he is the Director of the ASTS Transplant Surgery Fellowship. 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 previously served as Councilor-at-Large on the Board of Directors for the American Society of Transplantation.  

Dr. Richard Formica graduated from Boston University in 1989 with a degree in chemistry and Boston University School of Medicine in 1993. He trained in internal medicine at the Combined Boston University Internal Medicine Program and served as the last Chief Medical Resident for Boston City Hospital. He then moved to Yale University for his Nephrology Fellowship. Dr. Formica joined the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine in 1999 and currently serves as the Director of Transplant Medicine, the Director of the Outpatient Transplantation Service, the Medical Director of Adult and Pediatric Kidney Transplantation. He is a Professor of Medicine and Surgery at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Formica has been a member of the AST since 1999 and has served in multi roles. He is now president.

Ramsey Hachem, MD is the Tracey C. Marshall - Dr. Elbert P. Trulock Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of Lung Transplantation at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.  His clinical and research interests are focused on the care of lung transplant recipients and the role of humoral immune responses in lung allograft rejection.

Dr Shelley Hall is the Chief of Transplant Cardiology and Mechanical Circulatory Support and Advanced Heart Failure at Baylor University Medical Center. She is an Associate Clinical Professor for Texas A&M Medical School. Dr. Hall is nationally recognized in the national transplant community. She is the Chair of the UNOS Cardiac Committee, the Chair of the American Society of Transplant Thoracic and Critical Care Council, the Secretary/Treasurer and incoming Governor-Elect of 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 Internal Medicine Residency and Cardiology Fellowship, specializing in advanced congestive heart failure, transplantation and mechanical support. Her research interests are cardiogenic shock and percutaneous support devices, the minimization of testing and treatments in cardiac transplant recipients and durable VADs.

Peter Heeger, MD is a Professor of Medicine and Immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  His research group is funded through NIH grants to perform research in solid organ transplant science including basic mechanisms a) linking complement to T and B cell immunity and cell death and b) new approaches to inducing graft tolerance. Additional translational studies identify and test biomarkers of acute kidney transplant injury, and test the impact and mechanisms of anti-TNFa induction therapy on late kidney allograft function through an NIH-funded, randomized, controlled, multicenter, international trial. Transplant research is supported by the Translational Transplant Research Center (director P Heeger), with its good laboratory practice-compliant immune monitoring core, common flow cytometry and sorting equipment for mechanistic studies, a microsurgery core facility that performs transplants in mice, and a T32 training grant for PhD students and postdocs in translational immunology. 

Dr. Michael Ison is currently Professor of Infectious Diseases and Organ Transplantation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is also the Medical Director of the Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Service as well as the Director of the NUCATS Center for Clinical Research.

Annette Jackson is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Immunology at Duke University and serves as Chief of Clinical Transplantation Immunology Research and Director in the Clinical Transplantation Immunology Laboratory.  She received her PhD in Immunology from Duke University and continued her clinical HLA training at Johns Hopkins University where she remained on faculty to become Director of the Division of Immunogenetics and Transplantation Immunology in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Jackson is an active member of the American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI), the American Society of Transplantation (AST), and serves on the ASHI-AST Sensitization in Transplantation: Assessment of Risk (STAR) and Banff working groups. Dr. Jackson has published in the areas of HLA desensitization protocols and kidney paired exchange programs and her current research has focused on the role of HLA and non-HLA antibodies in allograft injury.

Michelle Josephson is Professor of Medicine and Surgery and serves as Medical Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation and Program Director of the Transplant Nephrology Fellowship. After receiving her MD from University of Pennsylvania she completed a medical internship, residency and nephrology fellowship at University of Chicago.  In 1992 she came on staff as the first transplant nephrologist at University of Chicago. Her mission is to improve the care and outcome of the medically complex transplant patient through direct care, education and clinical research.

Her research projects examine the live kidney donor, post-transplant bone disease, BK virus, and post-transplant pregnancy.  She is deeply committed to education having established University of Chicago’s Transplant Nephrology Fellowship.

Dr. Josephson was a member of the KDIGO international work group that wrote “Care of the Transplant Recipient Guidelines.”  She served as Councilor for the Board of the American Society of Transplantation (AST).  She has chaired AST’s Grant Committee, AST’s Community Education Subcommittee and CEOT  2020 and 2021 Planning Committees. Dr. Josephson was a member of ABIM’s nephrology test writing subcommittee.    She lectures nationally and internationally, and currently serves as Secretary to the American Society of Nephrology. 

Dr. Kiran Khush is Professor of Medicine and a transplant cardiologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, focuses on donor evaluation and selection for heart transplantation; non-invasive detection of post-transplant complications including acute rejection, cardiac allograft vasculopathy, and malignancies; and prevention of immune-mediated complications after heart transplantation. Dr. Khush directs the advanced heart failure transplant cardiology fellowship program at Stanford, is Associate Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation, and is on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation.

Daniel Kim is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Alberta where he is an Interventional & Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiologist. He is the Medical Director of Advanced Heart Failure & Transplantation and Adult Cardiac Assist Devices Programs. He is a recognized educator, having received numerous teaching awards for Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Peer Teaching. His current research focuses on novel detection methods for acute rejection and cardiac allograft vasculopathy, translational mechanisms in cardiac remodeling and decompensation, as well as cardiorenal physiology in heart failure. He is involved with numerous organizations and has been invited to speak nationally and internationally at both interventional and advanced heart failure/transplant meetings. He is currently on the primary panel for the ISHLT Heart Transplant Guidelines Update, the CCTN/CCS Position Statement on Heart Transplant Patient Eligibility, Selection, and Post-Transplant Care, and the CCS Mechanical Circulatory Support Position Statement.

Stuart Knechtle is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Surgery and Executive Director of the Duke Transplant Center. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Cornell Weill School of Medicine. He trained in surgery at Duke and in transplant surgery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he was appointed as the first Ray D. Owen Professor of Transplantation. He performed the first LRD liver transplant in Wisconsin. He moved to Emory University in 2008 as the Carlos and Marguerite Mason Professor of Liver Transplantation. He performed the first domino liver transplant in Georgia. In 2015 he returned to Duke. He directs research in transplant immunology and has published over 400 peer reviewed papers, over 60 book chapters, edited four textbooks, and serves on the editorial board of Annals of Surgery. He has trained more than 100 students of transplant surgery and immunology and led numerous clinical trials.

Jon Kobashigawa, MD is the DSL/Thomas D. Gordon Professor of Medicine and serves as the Director of the Advanced Heart Disease Section and Director of the Heart Transplant Program at the Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute.  He is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in the heart transplant field. He has served as President of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), as a member of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Thoracic Committee, and as a member of the American Society of Transplantation Board of Directors.  Dr. Kobashigawa has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles, chapters and monographs in the field of heart transplantation and has chaired several multi-center heart transplant clinical trials. He has served on several editorial boards including the American Journal of Transplantation as Deputy Editor, the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, the European Heart Journal and Cardiology Today.

Dr. Deepali Kumar is Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.  She is a transplant infectious diseases physician in the Ajmera Transplant Centre at University Health Network.  Dr. Kumar has a translational research program that consists of both clinical and laboratory-based research.  Her research focuses on immunologic responses to vaccines and viral infections in transplant recipients.  She has supervised numerous graduate students and medical residents/fellows.  She has authored over 200 manuscripts, editorials, and book chapters in the field of transplantation. She is Editor-in-chief of The AST Handbook of Transplant Infections and Associate Editor of the 4rd Transplant ID Guidelines published in Clinical Transplantation. She is also Chair of the Canadian Standards Association Technical Committee for Cells, Tissues, and Organs.  She currently holds the role of Secretary of the American Society of Transplantation.

Dr. Vineeta Kumar is a fulltime Tenured and Endowed Professor of Medicine at University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) and is the Medical Director of the Incompatible Kidney Transplant Program. Dr. Kumar is recognized as an exemplary clinician and educator and is the awardee of the multiple prestigious accolades including the Cobb and Rutsky Clinical Excellence Award for nine consecutive years, the coveted Brewer Heslin award for professionalism in 2017, the 2018 Dean Award for Excellence in Teaching and the prestigious 2019 UAB Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is recognized annually in Top Doctors of America and a sought after speaker regionally and nationally with NKF, ASN, and AST. She served as the chair of the AST Education Committee in 2015, is the current chair of the Living Donor Community of Practice, member of CEOT Planning Committee and the AST Patient Education Subcommittee.

Dr. Jennifer Lai is a general/transplant hepatologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Her mission is to improve the lives of patients with end-stage liver disease both at an individual level—through exceptional patient-centered care—and at a system-wide level—through rigorous clinical investigation and effective dissemination of impactful research. Her research lies at the intersection of hepatology, liver transplantation, and geriatrics, focusing on the application of aging research principles to the care of liver transplant patients across their life-long journey from diagnosis of advanced chronic liver disease through long after liver transplantation. Dr. Lai is principal investigator of the NIH-funded Multi-Center Functional Assessment in Liver Transplantation (FrAILT) Study. She also serves as the Director of the UCSF Advancing Research in Clinical Hepatology (ARCH) program.

Chris Leptak, MD, PhD, completed his MD and PhD in microbiology/immunology at UCSF.  After residency in Emergency Medicine at Harvard’s combined Mass General and Brigham program, he joined FDA in 2007 as a primary reviewer in OND’s division of gastroenterology products, focusing on immunomodulators for inflammatory bowel diseases.  In 2010, he joined OND’s Guidance and Policy Team and became OND’s Biomarker and Companion Diagnostics Lead.  His focus is on biomarker and diagnostic device utility in clinical trials and drug development, both for drug-specific programs.  Chris is the Director of CDER’s Biomarker Qualification Program and also Director of OND’s Regulatory Science Program which aims to improve regulatory consistency and policy development in areas of emerging science and technology.

Deborah Jo Levine is a Professor of Medicine, Medical Director of Lung Transplantation, Director of Pulmonary Hypertension, and the Forrest C. Roan-Nelson Puett Distinguished Professor in Pulmonary Medicine at University of Texas San Antonio.

She has dedicated her career to the field of lung transplantation. Her focus in the field includes daily clinical endeavors, conducting research in many facets of lung transplantation, holding leadership positions, as well as advancing the field through many educational platforms.

Clinically, she has tirelessly been involved with every aspect of the management of lung transplant recipients- from donor management to the management of her recipients in the ICU, hospital and clinic.

Early in her career, she co-authored the manuscript describing the SALT-protocol for lung donor management which is still in many OPO’s throughout the country. She has subsequently been involved in teaching several OPOs the details of lung donor management, including hands on bronchoscopy techniques.

Her main research interest, however, is in antibody mediated rejection in lung transplantation. In 2016, she created and led a consensus conference regarding antibody mediated rejection in lung transplantation.  This led to an important paper in the field of lung transplant.

From an education standpoint, Deborah has been involved in mentoring young faculty and fellows in the field. She has led and been involved in several transplant educational symposiums, courses and lectures.  She has been involved with the AST fellows Course for two years, educating graduating fellows interested in this field. She has been involved in the education committee for both CHEST and the ISHLT.

She has been active in several committees and work groups in the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplant Society, CHEST, AST and ATS, regarding important concepts in lung transplant. She has held a leadership position as the Lung Transplant Chair in the American College of Chest Physicians. 

Over the last five years, she has become very active and involved in the AST. She is now the Vice Chair of the Thoracic and Critical Care (TCC) COP.  She is also involved in the Public Policy committee and the STAR AMR committee.  

Her key aim in working with AST is to grow the presence of lung transplant and critical care medicine in the AST. She is interested in continuing to mentor younger faculty and in creating a more robust lung transplant education and research effort for our society.

Dr. Megan Levings has been in the UBC Department of Surgery since 2003 when she was recruited back to Canada as a Canada Research Chair in Transplantation. In 2011 she joined the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute where she now heads the Childhood Diseases Research Theme. She was among the first to show that a special kind of white blood cell, known as a T regulatory cell, could be used as a cellular therapy to stop harmful immune responses. She continues this line of research at UBC, and now leads a vibrant group of trainees and staff who are researching how to use T regulatory cells to replace conventional immunosuppression in the context of transplantation and autoimmunity.

Josh Levitsky, MD, MS is currently a Professor of Medicine and Surgery in the Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Levitsky received his B.S. from the University of Michigan and M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He then completed an Internal Medicine residency and Gastroenterology fellowship at the University of Chicago Hospitals and a Transplant Hepatology fellowship at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. At Northwestern, he completed a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation. He is currently certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in Gastroenterology and Transplant Hepatology.   Dr. Levitsky is an active member of several professional societies. He was previously a Councilor-At-Large for the American Society of Transplantation from 2014-2017 and is the current AST Treasurer. He was a prior chair of the American Transplant Congress and recent co-chair of AST’s CEOT meeting. 

Dr. Jayme Locke is an abdominal transplant surgeon specializing in innovative strategies for the transplantation of incompatible organs, disparities in access to and outcomes after solid organ transplantation, and transplantation of HIV-infected end-stage patients. Her research interests include complex statistical analysis and modeling of transplant outcomes and behavioral research focused on health disparities.  She has authored more than 120 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 20 book chapters, and is an NIH-funded investigator. In addition, Dr. Locke is a Deputy Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation, and is an editorial board member for Annals of Surgery. Dr. Locke is the recipient of numerous honors including the AST Clinical Science Faculty Award 2020. Dr. Locke is currently the Mark H. Deierhoi MD Endowed Professor in Surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and serves as the Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Institute and Chief of the Division of Abdominal Transplant Surgery. 

A 22+ year veteran of Microsoft, Molly McCarthy, Microsoft Director of Engineering, grew up in NW Illinois and built her career on listening to customers and translating their business needs into Microsoft priorities and product functionality.  Shaped by a small town upbringing and a diverse career across product engineering, marketing, recruiting and competitive intelligence, the common theme of her career has been representing and advocating for the customer point of view across all customer segments, industries and geographies.  As part of the Commercial Software Engineering team, she engages with line of business decision makers at some of the world's largest companies to help them build cloud based solutions to unleash their digital transformation.  A three time kidney transplant recipient, Molly serves in patient advocacy roles with United Network for Organ Sharing and the American Society of Transplantation, and acts as a local transplant advocate near her home in Seattle.  In her off time, Molly and her husband John enjoy cooking, exploring the Pacific Northwest, landscaping and entertaining.

Dr. Roslyn Bernstein Mannon is a Professor of Medicine, Pathology and Microbiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Vice-Chair for Academic Development and Research Mentoring and Associate Chief of Research in Nephrology. Dr. Mannon is a Fellow of the American Society of Nephrology and American Society of Transplantation. A Duke-trained nephrologist, Dr. Mannon is a past-president of the AST and is a Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation. Dr. Mannon’s laboratory research focuses on mechanisms of chronic graft injury using in vitro and in vivo models of drug toxicity and kidney transplantation. Dr. Mannon is site PI for the Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation (CTOT), a member of the CTOT Steering Committee, and the steering committee for the Transplant Therapeutics Consortium, which is dedicated to accelerating new transplant therapies into practice.  She has published over 200 peer-reviewed publications on chronic allograft failure and post-transplant complications and therapeutics. 

Dr. Michael Mengel is Chair and Medical Director for Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Alberta and with Alberta Precision Laboratories Ltd. in Edmonton, Canada. As a sub-specialized Transplantation and Renal Pathologist, Dr. Mengel is engaged in various international sub-specialty societies related to nephropathology and organ transplantation: past Chair Transplant Diagnostics Community of Practice in the American Society of Transplantation; Board Chair International Banff Foundation for Allograft Pathology; past President of the Canadian Society of Transplantation; President of the International Renal Pathology Society. He studied medicine at the Semmelweiss University in Budapest, Hungary before going on to specialize in pathology and further in transplantation pathology and nephropathology. Dr. Mengel has published widely in his field and his current work is focused on applying molecular techniques to biopsy specimens, with the aim to increase diagnostic precision in organ transplantation. 

Dr. Marian Michaels is a Professor of Pediatrics and Surgery in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Pittsburgh, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP). She has worked in pediatric infectious diseases for over 30 years with her research and clinical work largely revolving around immunocompromised hosts with an emphasis on those undergoing transplantation. Dr Michaels has been active in the American Society of Transplantation (AST) all her professional career and just completed her term as an AST Board member. In addition, she is the current Past Chair of OPTN/UNOS Ad Hoc Disease Transmission Advisory Committee (DTAC), serves on the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Committee for the international Pediatric Transplant Association (IPTA) and is a member of the NIAID transplant Data Safety Monitoring Committee.

Dr. Sumit Mohan is an associate professor of medicine & epidemiology at Columbia University who has focused his clinical and research career on understanding health disparities in kidney disease and improving outcomes for patients with kidney disease and transplantation. His research findings have been used to inform policy related to reimbursement of dialysis for acute kidney injury, elimination of outcomes as a regulatory measure for transplant centers and more recently to inform the focus on reduction of discards.

Kenneth A. Newell, MD, PhD graduated from Kalamazoo College and the University of Michigan Medical School.  Following a residency in general surgery at Loyola University Medical Center, he obtained a PhD in immunology and completed a fellowship in transplantation surgery at the University of Chicago.  After seven years as a faculty member at the University of Chicago, he moved to Emory University where he is Professor of Surgery and Vice Chair for Academic Affairs.

Dr. Newell’s clinical practice focuses on kidney transplantation in adults and children, pancreas transplantation, and living kidney donation.  His research interests span the spectrum from basic laboratory investigation to clinical trials focusing on alloimmunity, immunosuppression, and tolerance.  He has lead numerous studies supported by the NIH and the Immune Tolerance Network.

Dr. Newell has served the transplant community in a variety of roles.  He is a Past President of the American Society of Transplantation.  He has served the NIH sponsored Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation (CTOT) consortium in many different roles.  He is an associate editor for the American Journal of Transplantation and previously served as a member of the NIH study section Transplantation, Tolerance, and Tumor Immunology.  He currently serves as an AST representative on the Transplant Therapeutics Consortium and is the co-chair of Workgroup 1, which is focused on gaining regulatory endorsement of new surrogate endpoints for clinical trials.

Dr. Peter Nickerson is a Distinguished Professor of Internal Medicine and Immunology and the Vice-Dean Research, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba.  He is the Medical Director of Transplant Manitoba and the Medical Advisor, Organ Donation and Transplantation Division, Canadian Blood Services (CBS).  Dr. Nickerson holds the Flynn Family Chair in Renal Transplantation at the University of Manitoba.  Funded by the CIHR and NIH, his research program focuses on mechanisms underlying acute and chronic transplant rejection; developing non-invasive techniques for the diagnosis of renal allograft rejection; and health care system design to enhance access to transplant.

Inish O’Doherty, PhD is Executive Director of two public-private-partnerships, C-Path’s Transplant Therapeutics Consortium (TTC) and Type 1 Diabetes Consortium (T1DC). His work focuses on the pre-competitive development of biomarkers and quantitative tools, which aim to optimize clinical trial design and minimize risk in regulatory decision making. The goal of these consortia is to receive regulatory endorsement of these drug development tools with the global health authorities (e.g., FDA and EMA), ensuring they can be used in confidence by the biopharmaceutical industry and the regulatory authorities. Dr. O’Doherty leads a cross-functional team of data managers and clinical and quantitative scientists, who collaborate with stakeholders from the medical product development community to aggregate and analyze historical patient-level data from clinical trials and real-world sources. Dr. O’Doherty’s portfolio currently includes seeking regulatory endorsement of several drug development tools through various formal and informal regulatory endorsement pathways.

Dr. Jacqueline O’Leary began her pursuit of research as an undergraduate at Stanford investigating drug development, continued at UCSF where she received and MD with thesis for work in cellular and molecular biology. Following her internal medicine residency at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Dr. O’Leary did a GI fellowship and transplant Hepatology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her post-doctoral research there at Harvard focused on Immunology. Afterward, she completed a Master’s in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. These accomplishments make her uniquely poised to translate research findings into clinical care. She has focused her clinical research in transplant hepatology on antibody mediated rejection in liver transplantation and is currently the Chief of Hepatology at the Dallas VA Medical Center.

Dr. Scott Palmer leads a program of clinical, basic and translational research in transplantation and advanced lung diseases. He directs the respiratory research program at the DCRI and serves as Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Palmer has over 150 peer-reviewed publications and has received numerous awards, including election into the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2012. He has chaired many sessions at national and international meetings, serves regularly on NIH study sections, and is on the editorial board of many prominent journals. He is Associate Director of the Clinical Research Training Program has mentored over 40 pre-and post-doctoral trainees, many of whom are now engaged in their own successful research careers. Dr. Palmer's scientific accomplishments include the first human studies to demonstrate the importance of innate immunity in transplant rejection, and completion of a prospective multicenter study that improved CMV prevention after lung transplantation.

Dr. Jignesh Patel is Clinical Professor of Medicine, Medical Director of Heart Transplant, Director of the Cardiac Amyloid Program, and Director of Heart Transplant Research at Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute, Los Angeles, CA.  His clinical and research interests focus on cardiac amyloidosis and transplant immunology. Dr Patel serves on the Leadership Advisory Forum and is past-Chair of the Heart Failure and Transplantation Council of the ISHLT. He serves on the Heart Failure and Transplantation Leadership Council at the American College of Cardiology. He is Associate Editor of American Journal of Transplantation and Current Transplantation Reports. 

Dr. Rachel Patzer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at Emory University School of Medicine, with joint appointment in the Department of Epidemiology. She is an epidemiologist and health services researcher whose investigations focus on healthcare access, quality of healthcare delivery, and healthcare outcomes.   Her recent research projects have focused on the development of a novel surveillance data registry for kidney disease, the development of quality metrics for dialysis facilities and transplant centers, epidemiologic investigations of the causes of variability in access to renal transplantation among pediatric and adult end-stage renal disease patients, and the development and evaluation of pragmatic interventions to improve access to transplantation.

Dr. Marcus Pereira is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and the Medical Director of Transplant Infectious Diseases at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His areas of interest include multi-drug resistant infections, resistant CMV infections post-transplant and more recently COVID-19 in transplantation. He is an Associate Editor of Liver Transplantation and an active participant and collaborator in the AST ID Community of Practice.

Sean Pinney is a native of St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Georgetown University where he received both his undergraduate and medical degrees. He completed residency at Beth Israel Deaconess and fellowships in cardiology, heart failure & transplantation at Columbia University. In 2004, he joined the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he directed the Advanced Heart Failure & Cardiac Transplant Program. In 2020, he moved to the University of Chicago where he is Co-Director of the Heart & Vascular Center, Director of Heart Failure & Transplantation and Director of Clinical & Translational Research. Dr. Pinney is an active clinical researcher who has led both NIH and industry-sponsored trials in the areas of heart failure, cardiac transplantation and mechanical circulatory support. He serves on the AST Board of Directors and is past President of the New York Cardiothoracic Transplant Consortium.

Lisa Potter is a transplant pharmacist, and the coordinator of transplant pharmacy services at the University of Chicago Medicine. UChicago Medicine offers kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas, and islet cell transplantation. The transplant pharmacy model aligns staff by organ group, and offers patients and providers alike transplant pharmacist expertise across all care settings. Driven by the importance of medications to a transplant recipient, and a desire for patients to feel it is a shared burden, she and her transplant pharmacist colleagues assume responsibility for all medications in each transplant patient’s regimen. For each patient, the task is to ensure each medication is well selected and properly dosed, ensure the overall regimen is practical and understood, and ensure that each component in the regimen is attainable and affordable. Helping patients navigate these needs has informed Dr. Potter’s research and advocacy priorities. She loves coffee, and chats about Medicare drug policy.

Elaine F. Reed, Ph.D., is a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Endowed Chair in Diagnostic Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. She directs the UCLA Immunogenetics Center and serves as Vice Chair of Research Services. Her research interests have focused on mechanisms of antibody-mediated allograft rejection and immune assessment of alloimmunity and infectious diseases. She is an active member of American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI), American Association of Immunologists, American Society of Transplantation, Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies, and The Transplantation Society. She serves on the editorial boards of Human Immunology and the American Journal of Transplantation. She has a strong track record of NIH funding and published extensively in the field of Immunogenetics and Transplant Immunology. She has trained numerous graduate students and post-doctoral research scientists in the fields of Immunogenetics and Transplant Immunology.

Christin Rogers Marks currently serves as the Senior Clinical Coordinator for Transplant Pharmacy Services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA.  Dr. Rogers Marks’ teaching, research, and patient care activities focus on the care of liver, kidney and pancreas transplant recipients. She has presented at various national meetings on topics related to immunosuppression management, pharmacokinetics of immunosuppressants, medication adherence, transplantation in HIV and pregnancy concerns in transplantation. She has published articles in Transplantation, Annals of Pharmacotherapy, and The American Journal of Transplantation and serves as a peer reviewer for various transplantation and pharmacy journals.  Dr Rogers Marks was the recipient of the 2016 AST Clinician of Distinction Award and the 2020 AST Mentoring Award.

Antoine Roux MD, PhD is the Director of the Lung Transplant Research Program at the Foch Hospital, in Paris, France. Since his residency and pulmonary fellowship, his clinical and research efforts have focused on infection and rejection after lung transplantation. 

He completed his PhD in immunology, focusing on CMV specific immune responses. It was during his post-doctoral work, at UCLA Immunogenetic Center, that he developed his primary research interest in acute antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) after lung transplantation. 

Since that time, Dr. Roux's research has been focused on phenotyping clinical, histological and immunological aspects of AMR.  He has led and been involved with multiple single and multi-center trials in the evaluation and management of Pulmonary AMR.  He has played a key role in the International BANFF consensus working group on this topic and was the lead author on the BANFF Pulmonary manuscript. He has authored multiple manuscripts on this and other lung transplant topics. 

He is currently the lung transplant Section Editor for the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, a member of the scientific committee of the BANFF Conference and the President of the International Congress on Lung Transplantation.  He is a reviewer for multiple pulmonary and transplant journals.  

Dr. Roux has presented his work at multiple international pulmonary and transplant congresses including ISHLT, ESOT, ERS and others.

Dr. Deirdre Sawinski is a transplant nephrologist and epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania.  Her research interests include outcomes for kidney transplant recipients with chronic viral infections, access to transplantation and organ allocation, as well as living donation.

Joanna Schaenman, MD, PhD, is a Transplant Infectious Diseases specialist and Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Schaenman earned her MD/PhD at the University of Virginia and completed her medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship at Stanford University, where she also earned an MS in Epidemiology. Her research is focused on immune senescence, frailty, and vulnerability to infection in the older transplant recipient, and immune control of viral infections including BK polyomavirus, CMV, and SARS-CoV-2.

Marina Serper is Assistant Professor of Medicine, a transplant hepatologist and a health services and outcomes researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include the use of digital technology and telemedicine to improve health care access and quality of care in liver disease and transplantation. Other areas of expertise include medication adherence, health literacy, and self-management science.

Dr. Carrie Schinstock is an Associate Professor in the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN where she is the Medical Director of the Kidney Transplant program and Convergence Chair for the Mayo Clinic Kidney Transplant programs in Rochester, Phoenix, and Jacksonville. She also serves as a chair on the Banff Antibody Mediated Rejection Working Group and participates in the STAR working group through AST. Her clinical and research expertise is in antibody mediated rejection and kidney paired donation. She has particular expertise in getting patients transplanted with high levels of alloantibody towards their donor including HLA incompatible transplantation and desensitization strategies. She also has interest in therapeutic clinical trials for patients with chronic antibody mediated rejection.

Michael Shullo serves as the Associate Vice President, Transplant for WVU Medicine and a Professor of Clinical Pharmacy in the West Virginia University, School of Pharmacy. He provides both clinical and administrative leadership/oversight to the newly developed comprehensive multi-organ Transplant Services for the West Virginia University Hospitals. Dr. Shullo initially joined the health system to design, develop and initiate solid organ transplantation and bring these new programs to West Virginia. Currently, he also serves on the Executive Committee of the ISHLT Board of Directors. Prior to joining WVU Medicine, Dr. Shullo was the Co-Director of the UPMC Heart and Vascular institute’s Advanced Heart Failure program. He has an international reputation in solid organ transplantation and healthcare as a clinician, academic, researcher and executive. Dr. Shullo received his Bachelors of Science and Doctor of Pharmacy degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, and residency training at UPMC.

Palak Shah, MD, MS is a researcher and transplant Cardiologist at the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute in Falls Church Virginia. Dr. Shah’s clinical interests include advanced cardiomyopathies, mechanical circulatory support and cardiac transplantation. He subsequently completed residency in Internal Medicine at Georgetown University and was Chief Medical Resident. During his Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship at George Washington University he received a Master’s in Clinical and Translational Research and was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha honors society. Dr. Shah received his Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant training at the University of Michigan.  His research interests are focused in mechanical circulatory support and cardiac transplantation; more specifically use of next-generation sequencing to better identify circulating biomarkers to predict allograft rejection in cardiac transplantation and transcriptome signatures that predict myocardial recovery with mechanically-assisted circulation. 

Amy Silverstein is the author of My Glory Was I had Such Friends (Harper Collins), soon to be a limited series on Apple TV+; and Sick Girl (Grove Atlantic), which won a Books for a Better Life Award and was a finalist for the Border’s Original Voices Award. She holds a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law and has worked as a corporate attorney. She currently serves as a patient representative for ASHI, AST, and SRTR, and has served on the UNOS board of directors. She has lived with a transplanted heart for 33 years.

Professor Gregory Snell MBBS FRACP MD OAM is the Medical Head of the Lung Transplant Service at the Alfred Hospital and Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He undertook his Lung Transplant training at the University of Toronto in 1991 on a Will Roger’s Scholarship. He was awarded the Order of Australia Medical in 2011 for service to Respiratory Medicine and Lung Transplantation. He has a particular interest in maximizing lung donation to facilitate transplantation and has worked extensively in the area of ‘extended’ lungs and donation-after-circulatory death lung donation.

Dr. Laurie Snyder is the Associate Medical Director of the Duke Lung Transplant Program. She is active in clinical care of transplant patients and clinical and translational research in lung transplant. She focuses on prevention of CMV after lung transplant, HLA antibodies pre and post transplant and frailty pre and post lung transplantation.

Anat R Tambur - Director of the Transplant Immunology Laboratory and a Research Professor at the Comprehensive Transplant Center, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL. Anat served as Presidents of ASHI and ABHI, and is a co-founder of STAR – Sensitization in Transplantation: Assessment of Risk, a workgroup supported both by ASHI and the AST. Dr. Tambur’s research focuses on understanding the role of donor-specific HLA antibodies in the context of solid organ transplantation with emphasis on understanding HLA-DQ at both the antigen and the antibody levels to improve donor-recipient compatibility and for developing approaches for risk stratification of patients pre- and post-transplantation. She serves as an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation (AJT), Clinical Transplantation, and serve on the editorial board and as a reviewer of numerous other journals.

Dr. Helen S. Te is a Professor of Medicine in the Section of Gastroenterology at The University of Chicago Medicine. She is also the Medical Director of the Adult Liver Transplant Program. Her clinical experience in both general hepatology and transplant hepatology spans two decades, and her deep and unwavering commitment to her patients has earned her peer recognition with the America’s Top Doctor and Chicago Magazine Top Doctor awards for the past consecutive 10 years.   Dr. Te’s clinical interests are in the management of complications of cirrhosis and liver transplantation. She has conducted multiple clinical trials and published her work in various journals. She also serves Associate Editor for Clinical Transplantation. She sits on committees of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the American Society of Transplant Physicians (AST), where she currently serves as Past-Chair of the Liver and Intestinal Community of Practice (LICOP). 

Dr. Elizabeth Verna is the Frank Cardile Associate Professor of Medicine in the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation and Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases at Columbia University, where she practices as transplant hepatologist. Dr. Verna has an active clinical research program in end-stage liver disease and liver transplantation and is the Director of Clinical Research for the Columbia University Transplant Clinical Research Center.  She has been an active member of LICOP, and is currently an elected member of the AST Board of Directors.

Flavio Vincenti is Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.  His major research interests are recurrence of focal glomerulosclerosis. He continues to pursue studies to develop strategies to decrease and treat recurrence of FSGS.  He is also interested in developing immunosuppression regimens that decrease toxicities, improves the use of current drugs and improves long-term outcomes.  He has contributed to the understanding of the incidence and risk of recurrence of focal glomerulosclerosis as well as its outcome after transplantation.  The National Kidney Foundation of Northern California honored him in May 2000 for his contributions to transplantation & treatment of renal failure.  He was the recipient of AST 2002 Novartis Clinical Science Award and was awarded in 2012 the Lifetime Achievement Award in transplantation by the American Society of Transplantation.  He has been an active member of the American Society of Transplantation and served as its president (2007-2008).  

Ashley A. Vo, PharmD, is the Administrative Director of the Transplant Immunotherapy Program at the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Professor of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA.  She earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree at the University of Southern California.  Dr. Vo’s research has been in advancing the field of desensitization for the highly HLA sensitized patients awaiting kidney transplantation.  Strategies included the use IVIG to neutralize HLA antibody, rituximab to remove memory B-cells and limiting antibody rebound, anti-IL-6 therapy to reduce pathogenic antibody production, and IdeS (an immune modulating enzyme which cleaves IgG antibody) for prevention and treatment of antibody mediated rejection in kidney transplantation.  Dr. Vo was awarded AST Clinician of Distinction in 2014, a prestigious award that recognizes clinical excellence and the creative scholarship brings to the field of transplantation, and Fellow of the American Society of Transplant in 2016.  

Kymberly Watt is the current Medical Director of Liver Transplantation at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, Professor of Medicine. Her clinical research interests center around long term outcomes after liver transplantation as well as NASH both in the transplant and non-transplant patients. Her main focus is in helping prolong survival after transplant with attention to obesity, as well as metabolic, cardiovascular and malignant complications after transplant.

Dr. Sam Weigt is a pulmonologist with both clinical and research interests focused on advanced lung disease and lung transplantation. He completed a Master of Science in Clinical Research through the Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) program at UCLA. After completion of training, he received a K23 career development award from the NHLBI, which focused on the relationship of allograft infections (Aspergillus, Pseudomonas, respiratory viruses) with chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD) and the biologic mechanisms responsible. His current research is now focused on the development of molecular diagnostics for acute rejection and chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD), as well as the identification of novel therapeutic strategies through better understanding of biologic mechanisms of allograft dysfunction.