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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. Gerald Berry is Professor of Pathology and Director of Cardiac and Pulmonary Pathology at Stanford University. Following completion of undergraduate studies in Biology and Philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia he attended the University of Ottawa for medical school studies from 1980-1984. Post-graduate training included a year of internal medicine at the Ottawa General Hospital before beginning his anatomic pathology residency at Stanford in 1985. After completing fellowships in surgical pathology, immunopathology and cardiothoracic transplant pathology he joined the faculty at Stanford in 1992. Rising through the academic ranks he was promoted to Professor of Pathology in 2005. He is currently the Director of Cardiac and Pulmonary Pathology. Other administrative positions have included Co-Director of Surgical Pathology (2005-2102) and Director of the Surgical Pathology Fellowship program (2000-2016). His clinical and research interests include cardiothoracic transplantation, lung neoplasia, interstitial lung disease, pulmonary hypertension, vasculitis and inflammatory cardiomyopathies.

 

Dr. Roy Bloom received his medical degree from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. He underwent postgraduate training in England, a medical residency at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia and nephrology fellowship training at both Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania from where he graduated in 1994. Since 1999, he has been a Renal Division faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Professor of Medicine. He has been the Medical Director of the Penn Kidney Transplant Program since 2002.

Dr Bloom is an active member of several professional societies. He has served on several ASN and AST (American Society of Transplantation) Committees related to patient care, education and practice improvement. He presently serves on the ASN Public Policy Board. He has been a member of KDIGO and KDOQI Work Groups for management of hepatitis C virus, as well as for kidney recipient care.

Dr. Bloom currently co-chairs the AST/ASN Transplant Course at the Annual Kidney Week and is a member of the Program Committee of the AST/ASN Transplant Nephrology Core Curriculum. He has co-authored over 150 publications. He is currently an associate editor for the American Journal of Kidney Diseases. Besides overseeing a robust transplant clinical trials program, his research interests include viral infections in kidney transplantation, as well as post-transplant outcomes.

 

Dr. Emily A. Blumberg is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is the Director of Transplant Infectious Diseases and the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program Director. Her clinical and research focus is in Transplant Infectious Diseases. She is especially interested in donor derived infections and viral infections in transplant patients, including organ transplantation in HIV infected patients. She is an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation and for Transplant Infectious Diseases and a member of the AST board.

 

Dr. Chris Blosser is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington. He has been involved in basic and translational transplant immunology research, along with outcome studies of at-risk U.S. kidney transplant populations. Most kidney transplant recipients gain quality of life and life years compared with dialysis, yet the care and systems are complex and demand much from patients. Dr Blosser studies immune-mediated kidney diseases and immune regulation, as well as mobile health technologies (mHealth), and how mHealth can assist patients in consistently engaging in self management and communicating with their providers in more effective ways. 

 

Dr. Robert A. Bray is currently a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine, at Emory University and Co-Director of the Histocompatibility & Molecular Immunogenetics Laboratory (1989-Current). Dr. Bray received his Ph.D. from Indiana University School of Medicine (1985 - Indianapolis, Indiana) and did a post doctoral fellowship at Rush Medical Center in Chicago, Il. (1985-1987). Dr Bray is a past President of ASHI and has served on the UNOS Board of Directors. In addition he has served on many other Committees within UNOS, ASHI, ABHI, NMDP and the AFDT (formerly SEOPF). He is currently the Chair of the UNOS Histocompatibility Committee./p>

 

Congressman Dr. Michael Burgess currently serves on the prestigious House Energy and Commerce Committee where he is the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and sits on the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and the Subcommittee Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection. In addition, he is a member of the Rules Committee and the Helsinki Commission.

As of the 114th Congress, he is the most senior medical doctor, on both sides of the aisle, serving in the House of Representatives. Because of his medical background, he has been a strong advocate for health care legislation aimed at reducing health care costs, improving choices, reforming liability laws to put the needs of patients first, and ensuring there are enough doctors in the public and private sector to care for America’s patients and veterans. He has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act over 50 times. He has played an important role in bipartisan efforts to reform the Food and Drug Administration. [Read More]

 

Dr. Darrell A. Campbell, Jr. is the Director of the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative, and Professor Emeritus, Department of Surgery, University of Michigan Medical School. He received his BS degree in zoology from Michigan State University in 1968, and graduated with distinction from George Washington University, receiving an MD degree in 1972. Subsequently, Dr. Campbell received his General Surgery training at the University of Michigan from 1972 through 1979. During this period, he spent two years as an investigator in the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health. Following General Surgery training, Dr. Campbell began his special interest in transplantation, ultimately heading the Section of Transplantation, where he concentrated on kidney, liver and pancreas transplantation. In 1986 Dr. Campbell spent 6 months on sabbatical in Cambridge, England learning the technique of liver transplantation with Professor Sir Roy Calne. Subsequently, he became Chief of the Section of General Surgery and continued in this position until 1997. He served as the elected Chief of Staff for the University of Michigan Health System from 2002 2010, and then the inaugural Chief Medical Officer at the University of Michigan Health System from 2010-2014.

Dr. Campbell won the Michigan Hospital Association’s Keystone “Patient Safety and Quality Leadership Award” in 2005; and he was the recipient of the John M. Eisenberg Award for Patient Safety and Quality, awarded by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality and the Joint Commission, in 2007. In 2013 Dr. Campbell was named by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of the “50 experts Leading the Field of Patient Safety”. In 2014 Dr. Campbell was awarded the Impact Accelerator Award at the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation for outstanding contributions to health policy and practice.

 

Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta and Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. Over the past several years he has been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary research endeavours that have allowed him to publish over 300 academic articles. He is a Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation and the Principal Investigator for a number of large interdisciplinary projects that explore the ethical, legal and health policy issues associated with a range of topics, including stem cell research, genetics, patient safety, the prevention of chronic disease, obesity policy, the commercialization of research, complementary and alternative medicine and access to health care. Professor Caulfield is and has been involved with a number of national and international policy and research ethics committees. He has won numerous academic awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He writes frequently for the popular press and is the author of two recent national bestsellers: The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (Penguin 2012) and Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash (Penguin 2015).

 

Dr. Patricia P. Chang is Associate Professor of Medicine and Cardiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Director of the UNC Heart Failure and Transplant Program.  She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Yale University and her Medical Degree from Johns Hopkins University, where she also completed her residency in Internal Medicine and Cardiology fellowship. In addition, Dr. Chang has a Master’s in Health Sciences in clinical epidemiology and holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at the UNC School of Public Health.  She is a board-certified heart failure cardiologist and has been at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2002 to lead the Heart Failure and Transplant Service.  Her clinical practice is focused on heart failure, including cardiac transplantation and mechanical circulatory support, and echocardiography. 

Based on her long-standing interest in the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease in general and heart failure specifically, she has been actively involved in multiple clinical and epidemiology studies.  She currently serves as a co-investigator in the NIH-sponsored Atherosclerosis Risks in Communities (ARIC) Study and is Chair of ARIC’s Heart Failure Committee.  Her work with colleagues in the ARIC Study has enriched the understanding of the epidemiology of heart failure, including its risk factors, outcomes and trends. She has also been involved with multicenter trials in heart failure, and local and national registries of patients to investigate various interventions to improving the care and outcomes in patients with heart failure, heart transplant, and ventricular assist devices. 

Dr. Chang is also Program Director for the Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology subspecialty fellowship.  She has been an active member of several professional organizations, including the American Heart Association and the International Society of Heart & Lung Transplantation.  

 

Dr. Howard J. Eisen was born in Queens, New York and was graduated with an AB degree cum laude with distinction in all subjects and Phi Beta Kappa from the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences in 1977. He received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1981 and was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha. He did his Internal Medicine residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He then did his Cardiovascular Fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis/Barnes Hospital and completed this training in 1987. He was then an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Medical Co-Director of the Cardiac Transplant Program at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, he moved to the Temple University School of Medicine to be Medical Director of the Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant Program which became one of the largest in the country. He rose to the rank of Professor of Medicine and Physiology at Temple. In 2005, Dr.Eisen was appointed Thomas J. Vischer Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Cardiology at the Drexel University College of Medicine and Hahnemann University Hospital. He subsequently also was installed as the Joseph DiPalma MD Famaily Professor of Cardiology. Dr. Eisen is an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation and Transplantation and a Deputy editor the Journal of Clinical Transplantation. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology Heart Failure,the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation and the Journal of Cardiac Failure. Dr. Eisen has led several clinical trials in cardiac transplant recipients including the everolimus clinical trials and has been involved in the development of gene expression profiling in cardiac transplant patients. He has chaired AHA research study sections and has been a member of NIH study sections. Dr. Eisen’s research has been funded by the American Heart Association of which he was an Established Investigator, the NIH and industry.   

 

Dr. Jeremy Feldman earned his bachelors of science with distinction in biology from Stanford University in 1994. From 1994-1998 he attended UCSD school of medicine where he was the Medicine, Education and Research Foundation Scholarship recipient. After graduating medical school, Dr. Feldman trained in Internal Medicine at Harvard University’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. During his senior year of residency, Dr. Feldman worked with Drs Goldhaber and Sasahara doing a mini-fellowship in thromboembolic diseases. After leaving Boston, Dr. Feldman returned to the Bay Area to University of California at San Francisco for pulmonary and critical care training. He then moved south to Stanford University to take on the eBay fellowship in Pulmonary Vascular Disease. After completing his training, Dr. Feldman moved to Phoenix and joined Arizona Pulmonary Specialists. Dr. Feldman is the Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension and Advanced Lung Disease Program and Medical Director of Research at Arizona Pulmonary Specialists. He is active in critical care and the management of patients with advanced lung disease. His research interests include pulmonary hypertension, thromboembolic disease, and interstitial lung disease. He has developed leading educational websites for pulmonary hypertension (www.pulmonaryhypertensionRN.com) and pulmonary fibrosis (www.pulmonaryfibrosisMD.com).

 

Dr. Sandy Feng is a graduate of Harvard College, where she received the prestigious Marshall Scholarship. She utilized this fellowship to pursue graduate studies in molecular biology and received a doctorate from Cambridge University. Her medical training began at Stanford University School of Medicine, followed by general surgery residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and abdominal transplant fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. As Professor of Surgery, Dr. Feng performs liver, kidney and pancreas transplants. Her teaching and mentoring responsibilities include leading the Abdominal Transplant Surgery fellowship program and guiding medical students, residents, fellows, and junior attendings in clinical and translational research.

With respect to research, Dr. Feng’s interests center on exploring mechanisms of spontaneous tolerance and approaches to induce tolerance in adult and pediatric liver transplant recipients. She is the overall principal investigator for numerous NIH-funded multi-center tolerance trials and serves as a site principal investigator for a diverse portfolio of other trials in both kidney and liver transplantation. She serves in a leadership capacity on the Executive and Steering Committees of the Immune Tolerance Network with responsibility for overseeing the Transplant portfolio.

Within the transplantation community, Dr. Feng serves as one of 8 worldwide Deputy Editors for the American Journal of Transplantation. She has held numerous leadership roles for the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, American Society of Transplantation, and American Association for the Study of Liver Disease. Recently, she has spearheaded a successful effort engaging the Institute of Medicine to conduct a study examining the ethical, regulatory, and logistical challenges that obstruct innovative research in deceased donors that can improve the quality and increase the quantity of organs available for transplantation.

 

Dr. Jay A. Fishman is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Transplant Infectious Diseases and Compromised Host Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Associate Director of the MGH Transplant Center. Dr. Fishman is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the Infectious Disease Society of America. Dr. Fishman is an internationally recognized expert in infectious diseases in individuals with abnormal immune systems including organ transplant recipients and has trained many of the leaders in this field. At the Massachusetts General Hospital, he directs a leading training program in Infectious Disease of organ and stem cell transplant recipients. His research laboratory is investigating infections related to the development of swine as organ donors for humans (xenotransplantation) and in the molecular biology of in the microbiome and virome in transplantation. He has a special interest in molecular diagnostics and biotechnology, transplant virology, and in medical education. Has held leadership roles in multiple not-for-profit organizations including service as President of the American Society of Transplantation and at the international Transplantation Society (Transplant Infectious Disease and International Xenotransplantation Sections), and the Board of Directors of the International Immunocompromised Host Society. He is a frequent contributor at national and international symposia. He has received career achievement awards from both the American Society of Transplantation and the Transplantation Society.

 

Dr. Richard Formica is a Professor of Medicine and Surgery at Yale University School of Medicine where he serves as the Director of Transplant Medicine. He also serves as the Medical Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation and the Director of the Outpatient Transplantation Service for the Yale-New Haven Hospital Transplantation Center. Dr. Formica completed his internship and residency training at the Boston University School of Medicine Training Internal Medicine Training Program. He then served as Chief Medical Resident at Boston City Hospital. In 1997, he moved to Yale for fellowship training in nephrology and joined the Yale Faculty in 2000.

Dr. Formica has expertise in the clinical care of candidates for and recipients of kidney, pancreas, liver and heart transplants. Additionally, he has expertise in the renal problems affecting recipients of autologous and allo-genic bone marrow transplants. He has been an active participant in the United Network of Organ Sharing since 2009. He has held leadership positions as the Chairman of the Kidney Paired Donation Work Group, the Chairman of Kidney Transplantation Committee and the Chairman of Simultaneous Liver-Kidney Transplantation Working Group. In these roles, he was responsible for the design, public vetting and implementation of public policy regarding, living kidney donation, deceased donor kidney allocation and the medically appropriated and fair allocation of deceased donor kidneys with deceased donor livers. Additionally, he is a member of the board of directors for the American Society of Transplantation and serves on its Public Policy Committee.

Dr. Formica has significant experience in clinical investigation in the field of kidney transplantation. He has been involved with the National Institutes of Health Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation since inception, having been a site PI on CTOT-1, CTOT-9, CTOT -17 and currently I for CTOT -19. In addition, he serves as a PI for numerous industry sponsored trials.

 

Dr. Jon Friedman is the Chief Medical Officer for Optum’s 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, Sickle Cell Disease, Spine/Joint Solutions, and new product development.

He has been with Optum for 16 years. Prior to becoming CMO for Complex Medical Conditions, Dr. Friedman spent six years with Optum as the National Medical Director of Transplants and Congenital Heart Disease. He was PacifiCare’s Medical Director of their National Preferred Transplant Network from 2001 to 2007.

Dr. Friedman holds a BA in Biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; an MD from Washington University Medical School in St. Louis; and a Fellowship in Geriatric Medicine from UCLA, Los Angeles. He is Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Geriatric Medicine.

Dr. Friedman is a member 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. Nicholas Furiasse is a native of the Chicago area. He is currently the advanced heart failure, mechanical circulatory support & cardiac transplant fellow at Cedars-Sinai Medical center and will be joining Northwestern University in the summer of 2017. He completed his B.A. at the College of the Holy Cross and M.D. at Georgetown University. His internal medicine training and cardiology fellowship were completed at Northwestern University where he served as both chief medicine resident and chief cardiology fellow. While at Northwestern, Dr. Furiasse completed a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation and a fellowship in advanced multimodality cardiovascular imaging. His clinical and research interests are focused on the application of cardiovascular imaging techniques in the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of various cardiomyopathic processes. He is also engaged in medical education at the trainee, provider, and community levels. He has been active with the American College of Cardiology serving as the fellow director of the Illinois chapter and graduated from the inaugural three year national Leadership Academy. With the AST, he has participated in the Fellows Symposium on Transplant, currently serves as the fellow representative on the executive committee for the TCC COP and led speaker recruitment efforts for the CEOT 2017 meeting.

 

Dr. Robert S. Gaston is Professor of Medicine and Surgery at UAB, also serving as its Vice President and Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Institute. He was previously medical director of kidney and pancreas transplantation (2003-2015). After obtaining a BA from the University of Arkansas (Phi Beta Kappa), Dr. Gaston graduated from medical school at St. Louis University. His subsequent residency in medicine and fellowship training in nephrology were at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. He came to UAB in 1988 as its first fellow in transplant medicine, and in 2013 Dr. Gaston became the inaugural holder of the Robert G. Luke Endowed Chair in Transplant Nephrology. A prolific clinical investigator, he has written over 300 articles, book chapters, and abstracts, and is currently Associate Editor (for transplantation) of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Recently elected to the American Clinical and Climatological Association, Dr. Gaston served as President of the American Society of Transplantation in 2011-12.

 

Dr. John Gill is Professor of Medicine with Tenure at the University of British Columbia, Division of Nephrology, Saint Paul’s Hospital. John completed his medical training in 2000 (BSc. 1990 UBC, MD 1995 UBC, Internal Medicine 1998 Western University, Nephrology 2000 UBC) and completed a Masters Degree in clinical care research at Tufts University, Boston (2002) before joining the Division of Nephrology at UBC in July, 2002 with a cross appointment in the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcomes Sciences (CHEOS).

John is an active researcher whose diverse interests include clinical outcomes in kidney transplantation, access to care, clinical trials, health services research and
research ethics. He has supervised 20 Masters and PhD candidates. John has published 150 peer reviewed manuscripts and has held peer reviewed research
support throughout his career. He was award a CIHR Foundation Grant in the first pilot competition in 2015, and is past recipient of the American Society of Transplantation Clinical Investigator Award.

John is Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation, Member at Large of the American Society of Transplantation (AST) Board of Directors, Executive Member of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodial Group, co-Chair of the AST Annual Fellows Meeting, Past President of the Canadian Society of Nephrology, Past President of the Canadian Organ Replacement Register, and is a former member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Ethics Committee.

 

Dr. David Goldberg 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. Ramsey Hachem is the Tracey C. Marshall – Dr. Elbert P. Trulock Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine. Dr. Hachem is the Medical Director of the Lung Transplant Program at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Dr. Hachem’s research interests are focused on the role of HLA antibodies in lung allograft rejection and chronic lung allograft dysfunction. He is currently Vice Chair of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation Scientific Council on Pulmonary Transplantation.

 

Dr. Michael Ison was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. He attended Grinnell College where we received his Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry and Chinese Studies before returning to Florida where he obtained his medical degree at the University of South Florida College of Medicine. He then completed his Internal Medicine Residency and General Internal Medicine Fellowship at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon. He then obtained his Master of Science in Health Evaluation Sciences and did his Infectious Diseases Fellowship at the University of Virginia. He undertook additional training in Transplant Infectious Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School under the mentorship of Dr. Jay A. Fishman. He then joined the faculty of the Divisions of Infectious Diseases and Organ Transplantation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 2005. He is currently the Medical Director of the Transplant & Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases Service, Northwestern University Comprehensive Transplant Center and Associate Professor of Medicine and Surgery.

 

Dr. Annette Jackson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and Director of the Division of Immunogenetics and Transplantation Immunology at Johns Hopkins University. She is an active member of American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI) serving on the National Program Planning Committee, Co-Chair of the Abstract Committee, and currently serves on the ASHI Board of Directors. Annette was elected to the executive committee for the AST Transplant Diagnostic Community of Practice and now serves as co-chair. She is an active member of the Histocompatibility Banff Working Group and the NHLBI Mid Atlantic Genomic Organ Transplantation Consortium.

Dr. Jackson has been involved in both clinical and basic science research and has extensive experience in molecular biology, flow cytometry, and both cellular and serologic assays. She oversees histocompatibility testing for the kidney, liver, heart and lung transplant programs at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Inova Fairfax Hospital, and the kidney program at George Washington Hospital Center. She is actively involved in the desensitization programs and kidney paired exchange programs at Johns Hopkins and her current research has focused on the role of HLA and non-HLA antibodies in allograft injury.

 

Dr. Aarya Kafi is a second year Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. He completed his undergraduate training at the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.S. in Biochemistry and his Medical Degree at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Following his graduate training, Dr. Kafi went on to complete his Internal Medicine residency at Cedars Sinai Medical Center and the West LA Veterans Hospital. He stayed on for an additional year as a Chief Resident for the Cedars Sinai Internal Medicine Residency program. His clinical and research interests include lung transplantation and pulmonary embolism.

 

Dr. Bruce Kaplan* received his Medical Degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York, New York. He then completed an internship at Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey; residencies at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, New York; a clinical fellowship in Nephrology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and a research fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Kaplan is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Nephrology, and Clinical Pharmacology.

He is currently Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic Medical School and past positions include; Kathy and Harry Jentsch Professor of Medicine and Professor of Surgery and Pharmacology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, Arizona. Medical Director of the Abdominal Transplant Program and the Section Chief of Nephrology at University Arizona. Past positions include Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Applied Genomics Institute from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Professor and Medical Director of Transplant Center University of Illinois, Chicago and Eminent Scholar and Professor at the University of Florida.

Dr. Kaplan’s research interests include immunosuppressive pharmacology, molecular biomarker development and outcomes in transplantation. Dr. Kaplan has published more than 280 peer-reviewed papers, 30 book chapters and is author of a new textbook on Immunopharmacology. His articles have been published in various journals, including American Journal of Transplantation, Transplantation, Nature reviews, Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Journal of Clinical Investigation. Dr. Kaplan is Deputy Editor for American Journal of Transplantation and on the advisory board of Nature Reviews.

He has mentored numerous fellows and faculty. Three of his fellows were winners of young investigator awards by the major transplant society. Four of his trainees are now Medical Directors of renal transplant at major programs. Dr. Kaplan has served as a reviewer for NIH and CDRMP.

 

Dr. Jon Kobashigawa serves as the Director of the Advanced Heart Disease Section and Director of the Heart Transplant Program and is the DSL/Thomas D. Gordon Professor of Medicine at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Kobashigawa is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in the heart transplant field. He is a past President of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation, a past chair of the American College of Cardiology Committee on Heart Failure and Transplantation, and a past member of the United Network of Organ Sharing National Thoracic Committee. He has served on the Executive Program Committee for the World Transplant Congress in 2014 and is currently the Chair of the Thoracic Committee and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Transplantation. Dr. Kobashigawa has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles, chapters and monographs in the field of heart transplantation and has chaired several multi-center heart transplant studies. He has published in prestigious journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Circulation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Dr Kobashigawa lectures at universities around the world and has mentored several young physicians who have ascended to important academic positions throughout the country.

 

Dr. Christian Larsen serves as the Carlos and Marguerite Mason Professor Transplantation at Emory U. His clinical practice is focused on kidney transplantation in adults and children. Together with his colleague Dr. Thomas Pearson, Dr. Larsen played a leading role in the development of belatacept, a first-in-class, novel anti-rejection medication that protects kidney transplant function and improves long-term transplant survival. His basic, translational and clinical research efforts focus on the development the next generation of safer and more effective anti-rejection methods, immune tolerance and xenotransplantation. As Founding Director of the Emory Transplant Center Dr. Larsen led the development of a fully integrated multidisciplinary center dedicated to life-long care and innovation to improve outcomes for transplant recipients. Dr. Larsen now leads the Center's quality, value and performance improvement program supporting lean-inspired continuous improvement approaches and a patient-centered collaborative culture. He also previously served as Chairman of the Department of Surgery, Surgeon-in-Chief for Emory Healthcare and Dean of Emory University School of Medicine.

 

Dr. Joseph R. Leventhal is currently the Fowler McCormick Professor of Surgery and Director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Programs within the Comprehensive Transplant Center of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Leventhal received his medical degree from SUNY-Downstate in 1987. He completed his surgical residency and obtained his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1996. He completed a multiorgan transplant fellowship at Northwestern University in 1998.

Dr. Leventhal’s clinical interests include kidney and pancreas transplantation, as well as vascular access for patients requiring hemodialysis. He initiated the first successful laparoscopic living donor program in the Midwest at Northwestern in 1997. Since 1997, surgeons have performed more than 2000 living donor kidney procurements, making it one of the most active in the country.

Dr. Leventhal’s clinical interests also include novel methods to expand living donor kidney transplantation, such as cross-match and blood-group-incompatible transplants. Dr. Leventhal’s basic science and translational research activities currently focus upon the use of cell based therapies to achieve transplantation tolerance. He has co-authored more than 80 peer review publications. Dr. Leventhal is a member of many national and international professional transplantation and surgical societies.

 

Dr. Josh Levitsky 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 where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha. 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, receiving an AASLD Fellowship Award. 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, including the American Society of Transplantation, American Association for the Study of Liver Disease, and International Liver Transplantation Society. He has served on several committees and councils. Dr. Levitsky’s academic interests are clinical and translational in nature, with a focus on liver transplant immunosuppression, tolerance and biomarkers. He previously received an AASLD Career Development Award in Liver Transplantation and has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, abstracts, book chapters and reviews on topics relevant to liver disease and transplantation. He is an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation. He is the principal and co-investigator for a number of NIH, pharmaceutical and investigator-initiated trials. At Northwestern, he is currently the Gastroenterology and Transplant Hepatology Fellowship Program Director and Director of Liver Transplant Research. He has been elected to the Feinberg Academy of Medical Educators and has received several teaching awards.

Dr. Levitsky has been a longstanding active member of the AST since the early 2000s. From 2010 – 2013, he was a member of the ATC Program Planning Committee and was able to significantly impact the number and quality of the liver programs. He is currently on the ATC Executive Planning Committee, representing the AST as the Co-Chair and will be Chair in 2016-2017. In 2014, he was the recipient of the AST Clinical Science Investigator Award. Finally, he was elected to the AST Board of Directors in 2014 and is serving as a Councilor-at-Large. In that role, he is currently leading an effort to provide a web-based curriculum for transplant trainees, called the AST Comprehensive Trainee Curriculum.

 

Dr. Alexandre Loupy is a Nephrologist at the Department of Nephrology and Kidney Transplantation at Necker Hospital in Paris, France. He started his fellowship in November 2011 and is now part of the department as an associate professor at Necker Hospital.

He defended his M.D in 2008 and obtained the Resident Award of Paris Hospitals. He defended his PhD in basic science in 2011 and and obtained a phD in biostatistics in 2014.

His research interest focuses on antibody mediated rejection of kidney allografts and the relationship with graft histological lesions, immune mediated vascular aging and allograft outcome. Dr Loupy has recently developed a populational approach of transplantation with new methodological tools that are used for risk stratification. This new populational approach of extremely well phenotyped cohorts has been extended to hearts, lung transplants Dr Loupy is involved in the French Society of Transplantation and the Banff Conference Scientific Committee. He has also built strong international collaborations with worldwide reference centers including the Alberta Transplant Applied Genomic Center, Edmonton, Canada, The University of Pittsburgh, USA and the Cedars Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center, Los Angeles, USA.

 

Dr. James F. Markmann is the Chief of the Division of Transplant Surgery and Director of Clinical Operations at the Transplant Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Claude Welch Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He specializes in liver, kidney, pancreas and islet transplantation as well as hemodialysis access surgery. He is active in numerous societies, editorial boards and organizations and is currently secretary of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association. He has published more than 300 scientific papers over the last 30 years, most in the area of immune tolerance and pancreas and islet transplantation.

 

Dr. Arthur J. Matas is Professor of Surgery and Director of the Renal Transplant Program at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Currently, Dr. Matas is the principal investigator on two NIH grants concerning ways to improve outcomes for transplantation patients. He has authored or coauthored over 700 articles and book chapters and his research has been presented at numerous national and international meetings.

Dr. Matas earned his medical degree in 1972 at the University of Manitoba College of Medicine in Winnipeg, Canada, and did his surgical residency and transplantation fellowship at the University of Minnesota Hospitals, where he was actively involved in clinical and laboratory research.

A member of many surgical and transplant-related societies, including the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (of which he is currently Past President), the American Society of Transplantation, The Transplantation Society, the American Society of Nephrology, the American Surgical Association, and the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Matas serves on the editorial board or is a reviewer for numerous journals.

 

Dr. Amit K Mathur is a Senior Associate Consultant in Transplant and Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Surgery at Mayo Clinic Arizona, and is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Mayo College of Medicine. His clinical practice focuses on adult and pediatric liver transplantation, kidney and pancreas transplantation, living donor liver transplantation, living donor kidney transplantation, and surgery of the liver, bile duct, and pancreas for benign and malignant conditions. He is also a member of the pediatric liver transplant team at Phoenix Children's Hospital. He directs the Transplant Quality program at Mayo Clinic Arizona.

In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Mathur has expertise in clinical outcomes and health services research. His research has been funded by federal and non-federal grants and focuses on improving access to transplant, health disparities, living donation, clinical outcomes, and health care delivery in transplantation. He has a particular interest in organ utilization patterns and clinical transplant outcomes. He also is actively engaged in teaching and mentoring students, residents, and fellows.

He is passionate about his service to the field of organ transplantation. He serves on the program team of the National Living Donor Assistance Center, and currently represents Region 5 on the UNOS/OPTN Minority Affairs Committee. He is a member of the Living Donor Committee of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. He is a member of the editorial board of Liver Transplantation and is an invited reviewer for multiple surgical and transplant journals. He is a member of several esteemed surgical societies.

He and his family live in Scottsdale.

 

Dr. Ulf Meier-Kriesche is currently employed as Clinical Trial Lead in Marketed Products Development for Orencia & Nulojix at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He joined BMS in 2013 as the Global Medical Lead for Nulojix.

Before joining BMS, he was the US Senior Medical Director for Transplantation/Immunology at Astellas Pharmaceuticals

Before his career in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Meier-Kriesche was at the University of Florida, where he was a 10-year tenured Professor of Medicine, Medical Director of Renal and Pancreas Transplantation and held the Central Florida Kidney Center Endowed Chair in Medicine. Even though his career focused on patient care with 20 years clinical practice experience, he is also widely recognized for his epidemiological outcomes and comparative effectiveness research with large national and multi-institutional databases. Dr. Meier-Kriesche has received numerous prestigious awards for his epidemiology and outcomes research including an award for “Outstanding Contributions to the Evidence Base in Transplantation” from the International Transplant Society. Dr. Meier-Kriesche regularly reviewed scientific papers for a wide variety of Nephrology and Transplant journals, and was an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation for 7 years.

An internationally renowned speaker, Dr. Meier-Kriesche has presented 170 abstracts at National and an International meeting, delivered more than 150 invited lectures worldwide, and has an excess of 150 peer-reviewed articles and numerous book chapters to his name

 

Dr. Joan T. Merrill is the Director of Clinical Projects in the Arthritis and Clinical Immunology Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, OMRF Professor of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma and the Chief Advisor for Clinical Development for the Lupus Foundation of America. She has 30 years of experience in treatment development for lupus and recognizes compelling parallels between treatment development for a heterogenous autoimmune disease and the complexities of preventing and/or managing transplantation rejection. She will review preliminary data from lupus relevant to two variables that are common concerns in our communities: 1.) Underlying immune-response variables which differ from patient to patient 2.) Empiric use of polypharmacy, which in turn introduces new layers of complexity. Therefore, although her presentation will focus on lupus, it doesn't.

 

Dr. Robert A. Montgomery is a Professor of Surgery and the Director of the newly formed NYU Langone Transplant Institute. Before coming to NYU he was the inaugural recipient of the Margery K. and Thomas Pozefsky endowed Professorship in Kidney Transplantation. He received his Doctor of Medicine with Honor from the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He received his Doctor of Philosophy from Balliol College, The University of Oxford, England in Molecular Immunology. Montgomery completed his general surgical training, multi-organ transplantation fellowship, and postdoctoral fellowship in Human Molecular Genetics at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Montgomery was part of the team that developed the laparoscopic procedure for live kidney donation, a procedure that has become the standard throughout the world. He and the Hopkins team conceived the idea of the Domino Paired Donation, the Hopkins protocol for desensitization of incompatible kidney transplant patients, and performed the first chain of transplants started by an altruistic donor. He led the team that performed the first 2-way domino paired donation, 3-way paired donation, 3-way domino paired donation, 4-way paired donation, 4-way domino paired donation, 5-way domino paired donation, 6-way domino paired donation, 8-way multi-institutional domino paired donation, and co-led the first 10-way open chain. He is credited in the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records with the most kidney transplants performed in 1 day. He is considered a world expert on kidney transplantation for highly sensitized and ABO incompatible patients.

Dr. Montgomery is a co-principal investigator for an NIH/ITN sponsored tolerance clinical trial for simultaneous donor bone marrow and live donor kidney transplantation. He runs multiple investigator initiated clinical trials of novel desensitization therapies. His research interests include mechanisms underlying the immunomodulatory effect of plasmapheresis, stem cell therapy for highly sensitized patients, and gene and cell based therapies in transplantation.

He has received important awards and distinctions including a Fulbright Scholarship and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and memberships in the Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha academic honor societies. He has been awarded multiple scholarships from The American College of Surgeons and The American Society of Transplant Surgeons. The National Kidney Foundation of Maryland has recognized his contributions to the field of transplantation with the Champion of Hope Award and National Kidney Registry with the Terasaki Medical Innovation Award.

 

Dr. Philip O’Connell is the Immediate Past President of The Transplantation Society. He is a Clinical Professor in Medicine at the University of Sydney and Director of Transplantation at Westmead Hospital. He is the founding Director of the Centre for Transplant and Renal Research, The Westmead Institute for Medical Research. His major research interests are the use of genomics as a marker of renal allograft dysfunction and the development of islet transplantation as a mainstream treatment for type 1 diabetes. He has a strong interest in modernizing clinical trial design for transplant immunosuppression. He is a past president of the Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand.

 

Dr. Jignesh Patel is the Medical Director of the Heart Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and an Associate Clinical Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He earned his Bachelor’s degree with honors and medical degree at the University of Cambridge. He earned his doctorate in vascular biology and physiology at UCLA. After becoming a member of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) in the United Kingdom, Dr. Patel pursued internal medicine residency at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. He subsequently completed training in cardiovascular diseases in conjunction with his doctorate in the Subspecialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) Program at UCLA, where he also served as a clinical instructor and chief cardiology fellow. He is board certified in cardiovascular disease and in heart failure and transplant cardiology and trained in nuclear cardiology. He has had a longstanding interest in all aspects of cardiovascular disease with special expertise in the management of patients with advanced heart failure and following cardiac transplantation. Dr. Patel has been the principal investigator or co-investigator of more than 25 research projects in areas related to heart failure and cardiac transplantation, including clinical trials of novel immunosuppressive agents, non-invasive technologies for the detection of rejection and multi-center trials of device therapy in congestive heart failure. His research into these and other areas has resulted in more than 50 articles in peer reviewed publications, several books chapters and more than 150 abstracts. He is a reviewer for several journals. He also has lectured extensively around the world on heart failure, transplantation and immunosuppression.

 

Dr. 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 training at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and fellowships in cardiology, heart failure & transplantation at Columbia University. In 2004, he joined the faculty of Mount Sinai Medical Center, and has directed the Advanced Heart Failure & Cardiac Transplant Program since 2005. In 2015, he was appointed Director of Heart Failure and Transplantation for the Mount Sinai Health System. 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. In 2014, he was appointed Section Editor for Heart Failure for the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and editorial team leader for the ACC.org Heart Failure clinical topic collection. He serves on the ACC Heart Failure and Transplant council, the ISHLT I2C2 committee, the executive committee for the AST TCC COP, the medical advisory board for the New York Organ Donor Network and is past President of the New York Cardiothoracic Transplant Consortium.

 

Dr. Susan Prockop received her medical and pediatric training at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and Children’s Hospital of New York. She then trained in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering and specializes in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Dr. Prockop is currently running trials that assess the use of adoptive therapy with Ebstein Barr virus and cytomegalovirus specific cytotoxic T cells. These trials enroll patients with a variety of underlying immune deficiency syndromes and diseases including recipients of solid organ transplants.

 

Dr. Elaine F. Reed 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 is also the Director of the UCLA Immunogenetics Center and serves as Vice Chair of Research Services for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Her research interests have focused on mechanisms of antibody-mediated acute and chronic allograft rejection. Her recent research studies demonstrate that anti-HLA antibodies can contribute to the development of chronic rejection by triggering intracellular signaling cascades that culminate in endothelial cell and smooth muscle cell survival and proliferation. Her work has delineated the signaling pathways leading to cell proliferation and survival, providing the opportunity for the development of therapeutic strategies. She is an active member of American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, American Association of Immunologists, American Society of Transplantation, Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies, International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, and The Transplantation Society. She serves on the editorial boards of Human Immunology and the American Journal of Transplantation. She has a track record of NIH funding for the past 29 years and published extensively in the field of Immunogenetics and Transplant Immunology. She has trained over 50 graduate students and post-doctoral research scientists in the fields of Immunogenetics and Transplant Immunology. She is the recipient of the 1991 Young Investigator Award, 2008 Distinguished Scientist Award and 2012 Rose Payne Award from the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics.

 

Dr. Jesse Schold is a 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 at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. He received his undergraduate training at Emory University, two Masters degrees at North Carolina State University and a Doctorate at the University of Florida.

Dr. Schold’s research interests include large database analyses, quality metrics for healthcare providers, clinical trial design, health services research, disparities in access to healthcare and statistical and epidemiological methods. He oversees outcomes monitoring and quality evaluation of the solid organ transplantation programs at the Cleveland Clinic and has special interest in the development and use of report cards for evaluating the quality of transplant programs.

Dr. Schold has authored over 205 peer-reviewed scientific publications with primary focus in the field of organ transplantation. He has served on numerous national committees including the SRTR Scientific Technical-Advisory Committee, the OPTN Data and COIIN Advisory Committees, the AST Kidney-Pancreas and Education Committees and as an NIH Study Section Reviewer. Dr. Schold is currently an elected AST Board Member and a Statistical Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation. Dr. Schold has been a Co-investigator on multiple studies from the National Institutes of Health, Health Services and Resource Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Schold has given over 100 invited national and international lectures and peer-reviewed abstract presentations at scientific conferences.

 

Dr. Daniel Schwartz earned his Medical Degree at George Washington University and trained as an Urologist at University of Maryland in Baltimore. He practiced in the US Air Force at Keesler Medical Center in Biloxi, MS and was in private practice in Palm Springs, CA. In 1992, Dr Schwartz joined Kaiser Permanente in Baltimore, MD and in addition to his clinical practice, he held a variety of administrative positions. In 2000, he earned his Master’s in Business Administration from Loyola College in Baltimore.

Dr. Schwartz joined CMS as the Chief Medical Officer of Survey and Certification Group in May, 2010. He has focused on infection prevention issues in multiple settings and transplant program and organ procurement organization policies and quality improvement. He works with DHHS, CDC, AHRQ, FDA, State Survey Agencies, and the private sector on ways to improve the survey process and patient safety.

 

Dr. John Sedor graduated from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and trained in Medicine and Nephrology at University Hospitals of Cleveland/CWRU. His post-doctoral research was focused on mesangial cell signaling. He remained on the CWRU faculty, where he is the MetroHealth Research Endowment Professor of Medicine and Physiology and Biophysics. Dr. Sedor was named Nephrology Division Chief at the CWRU MetroHealth System campus in 1991, and he subsequently became the Vice-President for Research for the MetroHealth System CWRU campus in 2003. Dr. Sedor is a recognized leader in kidney disease research and treatment. He has received funding from the NIH for over 25 years and his current research effort is focused on identification of the molecular mechanisms by which the ApoL1 protein confers chronic glomerular disease risk. He was a recipient of The Mather Charitable Foundation Young Scholar Award and an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association. He was the Principal Investigator for the CWRU Western Reserve University O’Brien Renal, a member of the NIDDK National Advisory Council, and has served two terms as a standing member of NIH study sections. Dr. Sedor is a member of the External Advisory Committee of the NIDDK Diabetic Complications Consortium and chair of the Data Safety Monitoring Board for the NIDDK FSGS Clinical Trial and the External Advisory Board NIDDK Consortium for Radiologic Imaging Studies of Polycystic Kidney Disease (CRISP). He chairs The Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network steering committee and a member of the CureGN steering committee. He has been a frequent grant reviewer for the American Heart Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, and the National Kidney Foundation, and he has chaired the Veterans Administration Nephrology Merit Review Board. Dr. Sedor has held many key positions in the American Society of Nephrology, including the Public Policy Board, Research Advocacy Committee, Clinical Research Committee, Basic Science Research Committee, and Annual Meeting Program Committee. He served as Chairman of the Program Committee for the 2007 Annual Meeting. Currently, he is Secretary-Treasurer and a Council member of the American Society of Nephrology. In the local community, Dr. Sedor is a longstanding member of the Board of Trustees at the Kidney Foundation of Ohio. He has chaired that organization’s Medical Advisory Board (MAB) and has served on the Cleveland Minority Tissue and Transplant Education Program MAB. He is a member of the Cleveland Clinical Translational Sciences Collaborative Executive Committee at CWRU. He has served on numerous editorial boards, including the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Kidney International, American Journal of Nephrology and Seminars of Nephrology. He reviews for Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics and Science. He has been a four-time Department of Medicine Teaching award winner and the recipient of the Chairman’s award in 2014. Dr. Sedor has lectured widely, including giving a number of named lectureships, and maintains an active inpatient clinical practice, including attending on the Nephrology consult and Medicine ward services. Dr. Sedor is a member of the Association of American Physicians and the American Clinical and Climatological Association. He won the 2010 David M. Hume Award from the National Kidney Foundation, and in 2013, he was elected as a Master of the American College of Physicians.

 

Dr. Laurie D Snyder is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center. She completed medical school at Duke University, Internal Medicine residency at University of California, San Francisco, and Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at Duke University. She did additional clinical pulmonary transplant training at Duke University and the University of Toronto. Dr. Snyder maintains a clinical practice dedicated to advanced lung disease and pulmonary transplant. She also conducts translational and clinical research through the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

 

Dr. Jon Snyder serves as the Director of Transplant Epidemiology for the Chronic Disease Research Group, Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation, a subsidiary of Hennepin Healthcare System located at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this role, he serves as Senior Epidemiologist for the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR). Dr. Snyder oversees the SRTR’s development of transplant program-specific reports (PSRs), CUSUM quality control charts, and all analyses performed by the SRTR in support of OPTN policy development and quality oversight. Dr. Snyder previously served as a co-investigator for the United States Renal Data System, focusing on the epidemiology of renal transplantation. He is a member of the American Society of Transplantation and The Transplantation Society, and he serves on the Board of Directors of both the Organ Donation and Transplantation Alliance and Donate Life America. He was the recipient of the 2014 Executive Director’s Award given by the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations for “greatly influencing and impacting the work and missions of Organ Procurement Organizations.” He has co-authored more than 70 publications and is currently an associate editor of Transplantation.

Dr. Snyder earned his Doctorate in Epidemiology and his Masters in Biostatistics from the University of Minnesota, where he also holds an adjunct faculty position in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health. He has more than 16 years of experience analyzing data in the field of organ donation and transplantation.

 

Dr. Christopher Sonnenday is the Surgical Director of Liver Transplantation at the University of Michigan Health System and serves as Associate Chair for Clinical Affairs for the Department of Surgery. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery, Section of Transplantation, and Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy at the School of Public Health. Dr. Sonnenday received his medical degree from Vanderbilt University in 1997 and went on to complete his General Surgery residency at the Johns Hopkins University in June of 2005. While a research fellow in transplantation from 2000 to 2003, he completed a Masters of Health Sciences in Clinical Investigation at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2003. After completion of his residency, Dr. Sonnenday continued on at Johns Hopkins as a Fellow in Surgical Oncology and Instructor of Surgery until 2006, and he completed a fellowship in abdominal transplant surgery at the University of Michigan in 2008. Dr. Sonnenday's clinical interests focus on liver transplantation, hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery, and general surgery procedures in patients with advanced liver disease. He sees patients in the Multidisciplinary Liver Tumor Clinic at the University of Michigan Cancer Center and the Transplant Center Clinic at the Taubman Center. His primary academic and research interests include the study of frailty and sarcopenia in liver transplant candidates, novel methods of patient selection in liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery, and quality collaboratives in transplantation.

 

Dr. Randall C Starling is Professor of Medicine Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of the Case Western Reserve University, past Head of the Section of Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant Medicine, the Medical Director of the Kaufman Center for Heart Failure and a Staff Cardiologist in the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. He also served as Vice Chairman of Cardiovascular Medicine, Operations. Dr Starling was an elected member of the Cleveland Clinic Board of Governors from 2010-2015. He was interim chair, cardiovascular medicine, Cleveland Clinic Florida from 2011 -2013. Dr. Starling completed his undergraduate work in biology and graduated cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh. He continued his education at the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Public Health, where he graduated summa cum laude with a Master’s Degree in Public Health. He received his medical training at Temple University, Philadelphia, where he was an Honor Graduate and inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha.

Dr. Starling is board-certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine, and advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, Heart Failure Society of America, European Society of Cardiology, and the Heart Failure Association of the ESC. He has served on the board of directors of the United Network of Organ Sharing, International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation, Heart Failure Society of America and is current treasurer of the Heart Failure Society of America.

 

Mr. Darren Stewart is a Senior Research Scientist in the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Research department and holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematical sciences as well as a master’s in statistics. He has 18 years of experience as an applied statistician, the past 8 in organ transplantation and previously in both the banking and aerospace industries. He has worked extensively on behalf of the OPTN Kidney Transplantation Committee and his current research interests include optimizing deceased donor kidney utilization; evaluating the effectiveness of the organ allocation system and identifying ways to improve it, and measuring equity in organ allocation. Mr. Stewart is the author of several publications, including “Changes in Deceased Donor Kidney Transplantation One Year after KAS Implementation,” which appeared in the American Journal of Transplantation in 2016. He has presented findings from numerous studies at transplant conferences over the past 5 years.

 

Dr. Anat R Tambur the director of the Transplant Immunology Laboratory and a Research Professor at the Comprehensive Transplant Center, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL. She is the immediate Past-President of the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI), and a Board Member of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Anat also served as the President of the American Board for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ABHI).

Dr. Tambur’s research focuses on understanding the role of donor-specific HLA antibodies in the context of solid organ transplantation with specific emphasis on assessing antibody affinity and strength as a tool for risk stratification in solid organ transplantation. She is also interested in understanding HLA-DQ antigen-antibody interactions and specifically focused on analyzing HLA-DQ epitopes.

Clinically, she is involved with kidney, pancreas, liver, heart, stem cell and double cord blood transplant programs and has contributed mainly to the desensitization program for both kidney and heart transplant recipients as well as to the Kidney Paired Exchange program at Northwestern. Her laboratory is accredited by ASHI as one of the few facilities for HLA Laboratory Director Training. She serves on several Editorial Boards including the American Journal of Transplantation (AJT), Human Immunology, Clinical Transplantation, and HLA.

 

Dr. Kathryn Tinckam is the Medical Director of the HLA Laboratory and a transplant nephrologist at the University Health Network, and an Associate Professor of Medicine and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Toronto. She is also Medical Advisor in Transplantation for Canadian Blood Services, responsible for interprovincial listing and allocation and the Canadian Transplant Registry clinical programs, and is the Secretary of the Canadian Society of Transplantation. Her clinical and research interests encompass the standardization of HLA laboratory testing, establishment of clinical programs and policy to increase transplant in highly sensitized patients, the contribution of HLA antibodies to antibody-mediated rejection pathways and outcomes and the management of HLA-related alloimmune injury.

 

Dr. Dolly Tyan received her PhD from UCLA in Microbiology and Immunology and is Professor of Pathology and Director of the Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics Laboratory at Stanford University. She has been active in the HLA field since 1972 and was President of the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics in 2001. She has served on the OPTN Board and the Executive, Histocompatibility, Kidney, Operations, Membership and Professional Standards, and Policy Oversight Committees. She is the immediate past Chair of the OPTN Histocompatibility Committee. She was an invited member of the 2012 international consensus conference on testing and clinical management of antibodies in transplantation. She is co-inventor of both IVIG therapy for modulating antibodies and the C1q assay. Her career has focused on antibody characterization and definition of HLA polymorphisms, especially as they relate to transplantation. Her presentation to the UNOS Board was fundamental to the implementation of the virtual crossmatching policy now in place nationally. Her specialty area of expertise is with the use of IVIG to down regulate antibody production in highly sensitized patients and characterization of residual antibody for determination of optimal time to transplant or for evaluation of reversal of antibody mediated rejection.

 

Dr. Alexander Wiseman is currently the Medical Director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Programs and is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado. He completed both his undergraduate and medical school training at Washington University in St. Louis, followed by residency training in Internal Medicine at University of California, San Francisco prior to moving to Colorado for Nephrology and Transplant Nephrology fellowship. Dr. Wiseman’s academic interests include transplant therapies for diabetes, organ allocation and utilization, immunosuppressive strategies and emerging therapies. He has authored over 60 publications and 15 book chapters and has given over 100 invited lectures nationally and internationally. He is active in postgraduate and fellowship education for both the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Nephrology, and is an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation. Recent leadership roles include Councilor, Board of Directors, AST; Chair, AST Grants Executive Committee; Steering Committee, AST Fellows Symposium on Transplantation Medicine; Course Chair, ASN Kidney Transplantation Early Program; Joint Planning Committee, AST/ASN Transplant Nephrology Core Curriculum.

 

Mr. Kevin Yoder is a member of the powerful U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee responsible for annual funding of the operations of the Federal Government. Yoder represents the 3rd District of Kansas, which includes the Kansas University Hospital Transplant Center. The Congressman is a staunch supporter of NIH research funding and has led several initiatives among his Republican colleagues to increase support for biomedical research. Yoder has also championed efforts to increase resources in the area of rare disease research. This year is the second year that Congressman Yoder has addressed the AST CEOT meeting in Phoenix. [Read More]

 

Dr. Martin R. Zamora is a Professor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Medical Director of Lung Transplantation, at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He received a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame and his M.D. from the University of Colorado School of Medicine.  He did his internship and residency in Internal Medicine and a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at UCHSC. Along with the recent past Chair of Surgery, Dr. Frederick Grover, he established the Lung Transplant Program at UCHSC and became Medical Director of the program in 1991. He has taught numerous fellows and has trained ten lung transplant fellows, several of which have gone on to lead their own transplant programs.

Dr. Zamora has remained active in clinical, translational and basic research. His research interests include the role of viral infections in lung transplant outcomes and the prevention and management of cytomegalovirus infection following solid organ transplantation. Additional research interests include Antibody-mediated Rejection of Lung Allografts and the use of Ex-vivo Lung Perfusion to increase lung donor organ availability. He has been an NIH funded investigator including the National Emphysema Treatment Trial and has been the principal investigator of multiple investigator-initiated or industry sponsored studies. This work has resulted in the publication of several book chapters and over 150 articles and abstracts published in peer-reviewed journals. He has been awarded many honors, including America’s Top Doctors Award and the Best Doctors in America Award. He recently was named the recipient of The Faculty Gold Headed Cane Award, which is awarded by the Department of Medicine to a clinician as a symbol of the highest degree of excellence in the medical profession. Dr. Zamora has been a member of the American Society of Transplantation Thoracic Committee and of the United Network for Organ Sharing Board of Directors, the UNOS Thoracic Committee and Chaired the Lung Allocation Subcommittee which was responsible for the development of the current U.S. Lung Allocation System. He is a member of numerous other professional societies. He also has been involved in community service having served as the President and as a Board Member of the Susan G. Komen Foundation Denver Affiliate.

 

Dr. Adriana Zeevi is a Professor of Pathology, Surgery and Immunology at University of Pittsburgh and the director of the Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics Laboratory at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center since 1999. Dr. Zeevi joined the Pittsburgh faculty in 1984 after a post-doctoral fellowship at the Blood Center of Southeastern Wisconsin. Dr. Zeevi had been a member of the board of directors for the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (2001-2003), American Society of Transplantation (2004-2007), American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (councilor, secretary, and president 1997-2003) and UNOS board (2002-2003). Dr. Zeevi has served on many grant review panels for NIH (TTT study section and Hyper accelerated review) VA merit grants for Immunology section, American Heart Association of PA. She is also a member of editorial boards for several journals including Transplantation, Human Immunology, Transplant Immunology and Clinical Transplantation. Dr. Zeevi has published over 300 peer reviewed papers and book chapters in the field of transplantation immunology focusing on pre-and post-transplant immune monitoring and risk assessment of transplant candidates based on genetic polymorphisms of cytokines, growth factors and pharmacogenomics. Another aspect of Dr Zeevi’s clinical research is the characterization of the humoral response in solid organ transplant recipients and the implementation of various novel approaches to evaluate the efficacy of protocols used to desensitize transplant candidates and/or to treat antibody mediated rejection in solid organ transplant recipients.

 

*Faculty not participating in session that provides continuing education.