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Speakers

 

Andrew Adams MD/PhD is Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Transplantation at the University of Minnesota where he holds the John S Najarian Chair in Clinical Transplantation. He is also the Executive Medical Director of the Solid Organ Transplant Service Line at M Health Fairview.

He received a combined MD/PhD with an emphasis in Transplantation Immunology from Emory and subsequently completed his General Surgery Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He returned to Emory and completed a fellowship in Transplant Surgery where he remained as a faculty member until joining the University of Minnesota in September of 2020.

His research efforts are concentrated on the development of novel strategies and therapeutics to promote transplantation tolerance.  He has made important contributions to our understanding concerning the interplay between viral infection, immune memory and the allo-immune response. He is also an internationally recognized expert in large animal models of xenotransplantation (pig-to-non-human primate organ transplant).

His clinical practice is focused on abdominal organ transplantation with a focus on liver & kidney transplantation in both adult and pediatric patients. One of his primary clinical research interests is resource utilization following kidney transplantation including defining the factors that drive increased burden of hospitalization and inferior outcomes. He has mentored numerous pre-doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows and PhD and MD-PhD candidates. He and his trainees have received numerous awards from professional societies.

 

Deb Adey

Dr. Adey is a Transplant Nephrologist and Medical Director for Kidney Transplantation at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). After her Nephrology Fellowships at the University of Vermont and Mayo Clinic, Rochester, she joined UCSF as a post-doctoral fellow doing research in the field of recurrent Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis with Drs. David Lovett and Flavio Vincenti. The research resulted in her receiving a Young Investigator award in 1997 from the American Society of Transplant Physicians.  She remained at UCSF from 1996-2009 as faculty, until taking a position at the University of Vermont as the Medical Director for their transplant program in 2009.  She returned to California in 2012, joining the University of California, Davis transplant program where she was the Medical Director of the Living Donor Program and the lead physician for the Pediatric to Adult transition program.  She returned to UCSF in 2015 where she is currently the Medical Director of the UCSF Kidney Transplant Program.  Her research interests have been predominantly clinical research in the area of desensitization and antibody mediated rejection as well as BK viral infections post-transplantation. Her academic focus has been in Transplant Nephrology training and education. Currently she is working with Dr. Elaine Ku to institute a clinical research outcomes data base, called MATCH, Multidisciplinary Advancement of Transplant Centered Health. She was the Transplant Nephrology Fellowship Program Director at UCSF from 2002-2009.   

She has been actively involved in the American Society of Transplantation (AST) throughout her career, having served on the Education Committee, the Membership committee (served as chair), the Accreditation committee (served as chair), as well as several communities of practice (COP). She was chair of the Womens Health community of Practice, and a member of the living donor COP, the pediatric COP and involved in pediatric to adult transition, the Infectious Disease COP, as well as the Kidney Pancreas COP. Currently she is a member of the AST Conflict of Interest Committee and the AST OPTN/UNOS committee. She served on the Board of Directors as a councilor at large from 2017-2020. She also had the opportunity to serve on the UNOS Ethics committee for three years 2009-2012.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maria-Luisa Alegre, MD, PhD

The Alegre laboratory is interested in T cell responses in settings of transplantation, autoimmunity and cancer, with an emphasis on mouse models and emerging extensions onto clinical translation. A main focus of the laboratory is on T cell tolerance in transplantation and how infections and inflammatory events can affect induction or maintenance of tolerance. The Alegre lab in collaboration with the Chong lab have found that transplantation tolerance can exist at different levels of robustness based on the number of mechanisms of T cell tolerance that are engaged, and that infections or inflammation can erode such tolerance. The impact of bacterial infections on transplant outcomes has led the Alegre lab to discover that the microbiota also influences immune responses to transplanted organs and can be manipulated to prolong graft survival. Similarly, the Alegre lab has shown that environmental factors that influence the microbiota composition, such as obesity and exercise, also affect the immune responses against transplanted organs and the kinetics of transplant rejection. Clinical studies have focused on the immunology of transplant recipients and of patients infected with the bacteria that influence transplant outcomes and, collaboratively, on the involvement of the microbiota in the responsiveness of melanoma patients to immunotherapy.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Judith Anesi is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Anesi is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and is an Attending Physician in Transplant Infectious Diseases at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Anesi is the recipient of federal grants from the NIH, CDC, and the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group for her research on the clinical and molecular epidemiology of bacterial infections among solid organ transplant recipients, with a particular expertise in donor-derived bacterial infections and multidrug-resistant organisms.

Dr. Anesi received her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago. She received her Medical Degree from Weill Cornell Medical School of Cornell University and performed her internship and residency training in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. She completed her fellowship in Infectious Diseases and a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology (MSCE) degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Jamil Azzi is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  He is the medical director of the vascularized composite allo-transplantation (VCA) and the associate director of the kidney and pancreas transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Azzi is a physician scientist who is leading a NIH funded laboratory that focuses on understanding the immune-regulatory arm of the immune system in transplantation, autoimmunity and cancer with the goal of developing more targeted and safer therapeutic strategies. Currently, a major focus of his research is CD4 and CD8 regulatory T cells and their activation induced cell death in addition to engineering cell therapies. Dr. Azzi’s laboratory is also exploring multiple genomics and proteomics approaches to develop biomarkers that noninvasively detect rejection in kidney transplant recipients and measure the immune function of immunosuppressed patients.

 

Dr. Lyndsey Bowman is an abdominal organ transplant pharmacotherapy specialist, Co-Residency Program Director of the PGY2 Solid Organ Transplant (SOT) Residency Program, and clinical coordinator for the transplant pharmacists at Tampa General Hospital (TGH). Dr. Bowman has been practicing in the field of SOT for 14 years following pharmacy school at St. Louis College of Pharmacy and two years of residency training at the Medical University of South Carolina. She joined the transplant team at TGH in 2015 after practicing at Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis for the 8 years prior. 

Lyndsey has been actively involved within the American Society of Transplantation (AST) since 2007 and currently chairs AST’s Community Education Committee. As a former Member-at-Large on the AST Transplant Pharmacy Community of Practice (TxPharm COP) Executive Committee, Lyndsey led the further development of the online community HUB and online programming for the TxPharm COP. On the Education Subcommittee of the TxPharm COP for 4 consecutive years, she helped to develop numerous programs for the American Transplant Congress. Lyndsey currently serves on the Public Policy Workgroup for the AST TxPharm COP and provides service to other professional organizations as the immediate past chair of the Immunology and Transplantation Practice and Research Network (IMTR PRN) for the American College of Clinical Pharmacy.

 

Anita Chong received her PhD in cell biology from the Australian National University, and is currently a Professor in the Section of Transplant at The University of Chicago, USA. She has a long-standing interest in transplantation immunology, and research efforts in her laboratory focusses on immunological tolerance following allogeneic transplantation and the impact of sensitization, as well as on the control of humoral immunity.  Her findings have led to pilot clinical trials for the treatment of antibody-mediated rejection and desensitizing patients for transplantation. 

Anita has won numerous awards for her research including the 2015 Basic Science Established Investigator Award from The American Society of Transplantation, 2020 Women Leader in Transplantation Award and the 2020 Distinguished Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  She has published 200 research articles, book chapters and reviews, and has received over 50 research awards from the National Institutes of Health, research foundations and industry.  Anita has served on grant review panels and the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Allergy, Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, and on the Advisory Board of Immune Tolerance Network.  She was the Chair of the Basic Science Committee of the Transplantation Society (2010-2016) and is currently the Co-chair of the Community of Transplantation Scientists, American Society of Transplantation, and Pillar 1 Chair of the Women in Transplantation (WIT) Initiative.

 

Matthew Cooper is a Professor of Surgery at Georgetown School of Medicine and the Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation at the Medstar Georgetown Transplant Institute (MGTI).

After receiving his medical degree from the Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1994, Dr Cooper completed his general surgery training at the Medical College of Wisconsin followed by a fellowship in multi-organ abdominal transplantation in 2002 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. He joined the transplant faculty at the Johns Hopkins Hospital upon completion of his training and was appointed Surgical Director of Kidney Transplantation and Clinical Research in 2003.  Dr. Cooper joined the University of Maryland in 2005 directing the kidney transplant and clinical research program until 2012 following which he assumed his current role in Washington, DC.

Dr. Cooper trained with the pioneers of the laparoscopic donor nephrectomy procedure and seeks new opportunities for living donation through innovation and by removing the disincentives for those considering donation while promoting the safety and long-term care of live organ donors.  His clinical interests included kidney and pancreas transplantation; particularly the use of marginal organs and has recently chaired both an NKF sponsored Task Force to decrease kidney allograft discards and a UNOS-sponsored System Performance Improvement Committee which have led to several exciting projects to potentially bring more patients an opportunity for transplantation.  Dr. Cooper is involved in several ongoing clinical research projects primarily with an interest in immunosuppression minimization and amelioration of delayed graft function in kidney allografts following ischemic reperfusion injury. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 300 abstracts and 12 book chapters. He is regularly invited to speak on a variety of transplant-related topics both nationally and internationally.

Dr. Cooper is involved in transplantation activities both locally in the District and on a national basis.  He is the current UNOS/OPTN President.  He is a member of the National and DC Board of Directors for the NKF and a member of the NKF’s National Transplant Task Force and Public Policy Committee.  He has served as the chairman of the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) Living Donor Committee and recently acted as the Councillor for UNOS’ Region 2.  He is a current councillor for the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.  He is a current board member for the National Kidney Registry, the American Foundation for Donation and Transplantation, the International Pancreas and Islet Cell Transplant Association, Donate Life America and the local OPO – Washington Regional Transplant Community.  Dr. Cooper has served as Chair of the American Transplant Congress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paolo Cravedi, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Paolo Cravedi is a scientist physician with a strong interest in kidney transplantation and autoimmune glomerular diseases. During his clinical training as nephrologist in Italy, he designed clinical research studies in kidney transplant recipients and in individuals with renal diseases aimed at prolonging survival of the graft or the native kidneys, respectively. His studies have contributed to defining the organ allocation system currently used in many countries around the world. 
He subsequently completed his postdoctoral training at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he identified unanticipated immune effects of erythropoietin. While Dr. Cravedi’s lab is still interested in understanding the mechanisms of alloreactive immune responses, it has more recently expanded its focus to study the pathogenesis of autoimmune glomerular disease.

 

Christina Doligalski, PharmD, BCPS, CPP, FAST, FCCP

Dr. Doligalski is the Cardiothoracic Transplant Clinical Pharmacist Practitioner at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Healthcare and Assistant Professor of Clinical Education, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Additionally, she serves as the Program Director for the PGY2 Solid Organ Transplant Pharmacy Residency Program. Prior to her current position, Dr. Doligalski completed her PGY1 and PGY2 Solid Organ Transplant residencies at Duke University Hospital and served as the Cardiac Transplant Pharmacotherapy Specialist at Tampa General Hospital.

 

 

 

          

Robert L. Fairchild received a doctorate in immunology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Clinical Immunology at the University of Colorado and the National Jewish Center for Allergy and Respiratory Medicine in Denver. He is a Professor of Molecular Medicine in the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.

Dr. Fairchild has served on many NIH study sections and is former Chair of the Tumors, Transplantation, and Tolerance (TTT) study section.  He has served as Co-Chair of the American Transplant Congress and the American Society of Transplantation Fellows Symposium.  He has served as Deputy Editor for the Journal of Immunology and for the American Journal of Transplantation and is currently on the editorial boards for the American Journal of Transplantation, Current Transplant Reports, and Kidney International.

Dr. Fairchild’s research program focuses on mechanisms of endogenous CD8 memory T cell activity on allograft outcome and on mechanisms underlying antibody mediated rejection of kidney allografts using both mouse models and samples from transplant patients.

 

Samira Farouk MD, MSCR, FASN, is a transplant nephrologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS). She is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Medical Education, Associate Program Director of the Nephrology Fellowship Program, and Social Media Director of the Division of Nephrology. Dr. Farouk is a graduate of Princeton University where she received her B.S.E in Chemical Engineering with a certificate in Spanish and Portuguese Language and Culture. She received her MD from Rutgers University – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School where she graduated with a Distinction in Research. She completed her internship, residency, and nephrology and transplant fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and also served as chief fellow. 

Dr. Farouk is involved in all levels of medical education and teaches medical students, residents, and fellows and has been the recipient of multiple teaching awards. She is interested in the development and study of innovative medical education tools and technologies, including free open access medical education (FOAMed) and social media. She is the co-founder of NephSIM winner of the 2018 American Society of Nephrology Innovations in Kidney Education contest, co-faulty lead of Renal Fellow Network, and Executive Committee member of NephMadness and the Nephrology Social Media Collective. Dr. Farouk serves on the Editorial Board of journals including the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, Kidney News, Clinical Transplantation, and the Journal of Nephrology and is a member of committees of the ASN and American Society of Transplantation. 

 

Maryjane Farr joined UT Southwestern Medical Center in September 2021 as Professor of Medicine and Section Chief of Heart Failure, VAD and Transplant.  Previously she was the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of the Adult Heart Transplant Program at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.  Dr. Farr is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University (BA’89), Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons, AOA (’98) and the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health (MSc’12).  Dr. Farr was the Director of Clinical Trials in Heart Failure and Transplant at Columbia from 2007-12, received an NIH training grant for her master’s degree (2010-12), and was awarded the Shorin Silverstein Research in Transplantation Award (at Columbia) for 2012-14.  Dr. Farr directed the Adult Heart Transplant Program at Columbia for 6 years, and she has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts in the field of heart failure, VAD or transplant.  She has participated in scholarly work and education with the ACC, AHA, HFSA, ISHLT and AST.  She has been an active member and leader in UNOS/OPTN serving three years on the Thoracic Committee including Heart Subcommittee Chair, two years on the Membership and Professional Standards Committee, two years as region 9 Associate Councilor and was recently appointed to the UNOS/OPTN Board of Directors.  She is an Associate Editor of Transplantation and Content Editor for Circulation. Her key areas of interest are in primary graft failure after heart transplant, immunosuppression, and long-term survival of heart transplant recipients.

 

Dr. Sandy Feng is a transplant surgeon who performs liver, kidney and pancreas transplants.

Feng is a graduate of Harvard College, where she received the prestigious Marshall Scholarship. She completed a doctorate in molecular biology at the University of Cambridge and earned her medical degree at Stanford University School of Medicine. She completed a general surgery residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a transplant fellowship at UCSF.

In her research, Feng studies tolerance, the ability for a transplant recipient to maintain normal organ function with minimal or even no immunosuppression.  With funding from the National Institutes of Health, she has led several multi-center clinical trials to study tolerance in both adult and pediatric liver transplant recipients. 

Feng has held multiple leadership positions in key professional societies and also with the United Network for Organ Sharing.  She has organized several national conferences addressing issues critical to the transplantation community, serves on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine, and is the Editor-in-Chief for the American Journal of Transplantation.

 

Jay A. Fishman, M.D. is 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 completed medical school at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, internal medicine training and Infectious Disease Fellowship at MGH, and Fellowships in Molecular Biology and Genetics at MGH and Harvard Medical School.  He completed the Executive Education Program in General Management at Harvard Business School.  Dr. Fishman established the Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Program of the Massachusetts General Hospital which has trained many of the leaders in this field worldwide.  His clinical expertise spans infectious diseases of solid organ and stem cell transplant recipients and other immunocompromised hosts; his background in immunology, virology and molecular biology provides a unique translational approach to these patients.  His laboratory investigates infections in xenotransplantation and viral pathogenesis in transplantation.  He has been engaged in clinical trials in transplantation and in molecular studies of opportunistic pathogens (Pneumocystis and viruses) for >30 years.  He has a special interest in molecular diagnostics and biotechnology and in medical education.  Dr. Fishman is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American Society of Transplantation, and the Infectious Disease Society of America. He has over 300 peer-reviewed publications and is a frequent contributor at international symposia. He is Past-President of the American Society of Transplantation.  He has received career achievement awards from the American Society of Transplantation and the Transplantation Society.  

 

 

Dr. Mandy Ford is a T cell immunologist and Professor in the Emory University Department of Surgery and Emory Transplant Center. Her research interests are in the area of T cell-mediated allograft rejection, with a focus on exploring the roles of T cell costimulatory and coinhibitory molecules in limiting donor-reactive primary and memory T cell responses during transplantation in both human cells and mouse models. She has been NIH-funded for this work since 2007. In addition, Dr. Ford is a Deputy Editor at The American Journal of Transplantation, a member of the Board of Directors of the AST, Past-Chair of the AST Research Network, and a member of the Transplantation, Tolerance, and Tumor Immunology NIH Study Section. She served as Chair of the AST Community of Basic Scientists from 2014-2016. In 2019, Dr. Ford received the American Society of Transplantation Basic Science Investigator Award.

 

 

Steven Gabardi, PharmD, BCPS, FAST, FCCP, is a clinical specialist in organ transplant with the Department of Transplant Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA.  He is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he became the first PharmD to receive an academic appointment.  Dr. Gabardi earned his PharmD at Butler University’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Indianapolis, IN in 1999 and subsequently completed his residency in pharmacy practice at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, MA in 2000.  After completing his residency, he was hired as a co-funded faculty member at Northeastern University's Bouvé College of Health Sciences.  His clinical practice site was at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Division of Renal Transplant, working in both the inpatient and outpatient settings.

Board-certified as a Pharmacotherapy Specialist and a Fellow of both the American Society of Transplantation and American College of Clinical Pharmacy, Dr. Gabardi has published in a multitude of textbooks and peer-reviewed journals.  He has been invited to speak at local, national and international conferences on many different transplant-related topics.  Dr. Gabardi became the first transplant pharmacist to be named an Associate Editor for both the American Journal of Transplantation and Transplantation.  He is also an editorial board member for several other peer-reviewed journals. 

 

Howard M. Gebel, Ph.D., has been Professor of Pathology and Co-Director of the Histocompatibility and Molecular Immunogenetics Laboratory at Emory University since 2001. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Missouri in 1977. He was trained in HLA as a post-doctoral fellow at Washington University Medical Center in St. Louis, MO. In 1979, Dr. Gebel was appointed to the Washington University faculty in the Department of Pathology and named Associate Director of the Histocompatibility and Clinical Immunology Laboratories at Barnes Hospital.  In 1984, Dr. Gebel was recruited to Rush Medical College in Chicago IL as Director of the Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics Laboratory. In 1998, Dr. Gebel accepted the position of Director of the Histocompatibility Laboratory at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Dr. Gebel is an internationally recognized HLA expert and has published extensively during his 40+ year career. He was a board member of the American Society of Transplantation (AST) from 2018-2021 and an associate editor for the American Journal of Transplantation from 2008-2021.  Dr. Gebel is currently a senior staff scientist for the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients and an editorial board member and Human Immunology. He was a founding member of the Transplant Diagnostics Community of Practice. Dr. Gebel is a frequent speaker at transplant forums including the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI), the American Transplant Congress (ATC) and the Cutting Edge of Transplantation (CEOT). In 2018, Dr. Gebel was honored by ASHI when he was named the recipient of the Bernard Amos Distinguished Scientist Award.

 

Dr. John Gill completed his clinical training in Canada and research training at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston before joining the Division of Nephrology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada as a clinician scientist in 2002 where he is currently Professor of Medicine with tenure.

Dr. Gill has been a member of the AST since 2002 and is currently the Society's President. He is Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation and Chair of the Annual AST Fellows Meeting.  He has served as Chair of the Education Committee, Kidney-Pancreas Committee, and Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee, and has led the organization of joint winter meetings with the Canadian Society of Transplantation as well as the AST Clinical Trials Symposium. He serves as Chair of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

Dr. Gill is a clinical and health policy researcher who has continuously maintained peer-reviewed funding throughout his academic career, he has led the development of a Canadian clinical transplant research network, authored over 120 peer-reviewed publications, and trained 20 post-doctoral research fellows.    

Dr. Gill has had a lead role in advancing national initiatives for transplant patients in Canada including development of Canada’s kidney paired donation program. He has served as President of the Canadian Society of Nephrology, and the Canadian Organ Replacement Register.

 

Marlena Habal, MD FRCPC is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. She received her medical degree from the University of Toronto, Canada where she also did her residency and cardiology training. Thereafter she completed an advanced heart failure/transplant fellowship at Columbia University and additional research training at the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology. Her clinical and research interests focus on highly sensitized heart transplant patients both before and after transplant, as well as on defining new strategies for heart transplant immunosuppression to improve long-term outcomes.

 

Peter S. Heeger graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (1980), completed a residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine (Temple University Health Center) and a fellowship in Nephrology (U of Pa.).  He is currently a Professor of Medicine/Nephrology, a member of the Precision Institute of Immunology, and the Director of the Translational Transplant Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.  Dr. Heeger’s research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and focuses on basic and translational immunology relevant to transplantation immunobiology.  Basic science interests include mechanisms linking complement biology to T cell and B cell function, understanding novel mechanisms and barriers to tolerance induction in murine models, and deciphering effects of cell death pathways on transplant outcomes.  Dr. Heeger’s group also oversees and performs multicenter clinical trials in transplant patients including trials in kidney transplant, heart transplant, and lung transplant recipients.  The trials are designed to assess biomarkers of transplant outcome and novel approaches to transplant therapeutics in efforts to improve outcomes in transplant recipients. Dr. Heeger is also an active mentor and educator, directing the cross disciplinary training grant in Immunology and the Medical School Immunology curriculum at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

 

Annette Jackson, Ph.D. D(ABHI) 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. Dr. Jackson holds leadership positions in the American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI), the American Society of Transplantation (AST), United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), and is an active member of multiple Banff Allograft Rejection Working Groups.

 

 

Michelle Kittleson is Director of Education in Heart Failure and Transplantation, Director of Heart Failure Research, and Professor of Medicine at the Smidt Heart Institute, Cedars-Sinai.  She is Deputy Editor of the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, on Guideline Writing Committees for the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association, on the Board of Directors for the Heart Failure Society of America, and is the Co Editor-in-Chief for the ACC Heart Failure Self-Assessment Program.  Her medical essays have appeared in the New England Journal of MedicineAnnals of Internal Medicine, and JAMA Cardiology and poems in JAMA and Annals of Internal Medicine

Jasleen Kukreja, M.D., M.P.H. is Professor of Surgery and Doris F. and Donald G. Fisher Distinguished Professor in Pulmonary Therapies and Science in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), USA. Dr. Kukreja is Program and Surgical director of UCSF Lung Transplantation as well as Director of the Adult Respiratory Mechanical Circulatory Support (ECMO) program.

Dr. Kukreja earned her medical degree from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine, USA. She completed General Surgery residency and a two-year Thoracic Surgery fellowship under the illustrious late Dr. David Sugarbaker at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School in Boston.  She attended Harvard School of Public Health where she earned a Master of Public Health Degree. Subsequently, she completed a fellowship training in Cardiothoracic Surgery at UCSF where she has remained as faculty.

Under her leadership, the UCSF Lung Transplantation Program has become one of the premiere programs in the country. Dr. Kukreja has received numerous professional honors including the Excellence in Teaching Award at Harvard Medical School, Outstanding Pulmonary Physician Specialist Award and the Special Recognition for Excellence Award from American Board of Cardiology, Top Doctors 2016, 2017, 2020, Exceptional Women in Medicine 2017, 2019, and the inaugural Trailblazing Women in Surgery Muriel Steele Society Award 2019.

Her research focuses on outcomes in Lung Transplantation. She has published extensively and has been invited nationally and internationally to share her expertise. She is proud to have trained the next generation of Lung Transplant surgeons who then went on to lead other Lung Transplant Programs in the country. 

 

Dr. Vineeta Kumar is a Professor of Medicine, an Endowed Professor in Transplant Nephrology and the Medical Director of the Solid Organ Transplant Program at University of Alabama at Birmingham where she also serves as the lead nephrologist for the living kidney donor program. Dr. Kumar is recognized as an exemplary clinician, is the awardee of multiple prestigious university and hospital wide accolades and has national recognition for excellence in clinical care. Her mission is to improve the care and outcomes of the medically complex transplant patient through direct care, education and clinical research. She is recognized multiple times for her compassionate delivery of care and has been the awardee of the Brewer Heslin award for professionalism. Her research interests lie in outcomes of living kidney donors, incompatible kidney transplantation, access to care and end of life planning. Dr. Kumar is deeply committed to education, both medical and community and is known for her innovative and superlative teaching methods. She has been the recipient of both the Dean’s and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching and served as the chair of the American Society of Transplantation (AST) Education Committee and has chaired the AST Living Donor Community of Practice. She is an active member of the ABIM’s nephrology test writing subcommittee and the AST Patient Education Committee and lectures nationally with NKF, ASN and AST. Dr. Kumar is an elected member of the AST Board, serves as the current Chair of the Transplant Subcommittee of the ASN COVID-19 Response Team, is the Region 3 representative on the UNOS Living Donor Committee, the incoming chair of the annual Cutting Edge in Organ Transplantation (CEoT) 2022 meeting. She is an incredible treasure to the field of medicine, transplant and education.

 

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.

 

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. He is an active member of several professional societies, including the American Society of Transplantation, AASLD and ILTS where he served on the executive boards. He is a Deputy Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation. Dr. Levitsky’s academic interests are clinical and translational in nature, with a focus on liver transplant immunosuppression, tolerance and biomarkers. 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.

 

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.  Dr. Locke completed an undergraduate degree in biology and chemistry at Duke University and her medical degree at East Carolina University prior to matriculating to Johns Hopkins Hospital where she received training in general surgery and multi-visceral abdominal transplantation.  Dr. Locke completed her Master of Public Health degree with an emphasis in biostatistics and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

Her research interests include complex statistical analysis and modeling of transplant outcomes and behavioral research focused on health disparities.  She has authored more than 130 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 20 book chapters, and is an NIH R01-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.  She is also a member of the American Society of Transplantation (AST), American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS; Councilor-at-Large), and American Society of Nephrology (ASN), as well as, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), Society of University Surgeons (SUS; Councilor-at-Large), the Southern Surgical Association (SSA), Society of Clinical Surgery (SCS), and the American Surgical Association (ASA). Dr. Locke is the recipient of numerous honors including the UAB Dean’s Excellence Award in Research 2016, and was named the 2016 James IV Association of Surgeons Traveling Fellow, Top 40 Under 40 by the Birmingham Business Journal, AL.com’s 2015 Women Who Shape the State, B-Metro Top Women in Medicine 2017, American College of Surgeons Traveling Fellow 2018, Association for Clinical & Translational Science (ACTS) Distinguished Investigator Award: Translation into Public Benefit and Policy (2018), and the AST Clinical Science Faculty Award 2020.

Dr. Locke is currently Professor of Surgery and the Arnold G. Diethelm MD Endowed Chair in Transplantation 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. 

 

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 Nephrology for Research. Dr. Mannon is a Fellow of the American Society of Nephrology and American Society of Transplantation. She received her MD from Duke University, completing Internal Medicine internship, residency and Nephrology fellowship and Chief Resident at Duke.  Her career includes serving as Medical Director for the Kidney/Pancreas NIDDK intramural transplant program and at the Birmingham VA Medical Center and Section Chief of Transplant Nephrology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  Dr. Mannon is a past-president of the AST and is a Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation. She is the chair of Women in Transplantation, an initiative of the Transplantation Society, chair of the Policy and Advocacy Committee of the American Society of Nephrology, and co-chair of the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients Review Committee. Dr. Mannon’s laboratory research focuses on mechanisms of chronic graft injury using in vitro and rodent models and is funded by the Veterans Administration Merit Award.  She has published nearly 200 peer-reviewed publications on the mechanisms of chronic allograft failure following transplantation, post-transplant complications, therapeutics, and immune monitoring. 

 

Valeria Mas, PhD, MSc, FAST Professor of Surgery, Chief Surgical Science Division, School of Medicine, Department of Surgery, University of Maryland.  Dr. Mas is the former Director and founder of the Transplant Research Institute, which is part of the Methodist University Transplant Institute associated with University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Previously, she was the Director of the Molecular Transplant Research Laboratory at University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA and the Director of the Transplant Genomics Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. Dr. Valeria Mas is a cellular and molecular transplant researcher with expertise in high throughput molecular applications and big data analyses aimed to evaluate epigenetics modifications and regulation of gene expression in conditions associated with kidney, liver, and lung transplantation. She has extensive experience with NIH and industry funded investigator-initiated studies. She has been conducting studies in genomics and proteomics related to kidney and liver transplant recipients during the last 18 years.  In addition to her continued participation in lectures, classes, wet-bench training, grand-rounds, and national and international courses; during the last 15 years Dr. Mas mentored 24 undergraduate students, 12 medical students, 15 medical residents, 5 graduate PhD students, 8 post-doctoral fellows, and 6 junior faculty—most of them already independent researchers and/or established medical scientists. She has been a mentor for three T32 grants and is currently a member of the External Advisory Committee of T32 CA163177. She plays critical roles in multiple national and international committees including International Liver Transplant Society Councilor, AST Community of Basic Scientists Executive Committee (2015-2017), AST Programming Committee, Chair AST Research Network Translational Scientific Review Committee (2019-2020), among many others.   Dr. Mas’ specific activities related to education and training include being a member of the Education Committee at the The Transplant Society (TTS), the American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week Education Committee 2021, mentor in Women in Transplantation TTS Program, mentor in Step-Up Summer Research Program NIH Summer Program, mentor for Undergraduate NIH diversity supplement award, and mentor for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (USOAR). Dr. Mas was part of the Senate, Faculty Recruitment, Retention, Retirement, & Welfare Committee, Co-Chair of the Diversity Recruitment and Retention workforce, and a member of the Diversity Committee at the Department of Surgery at the University of Virginia. She has more than 120 peer review publications and she has extensive experience as a grant reviewer for federal and non-federal funding agencies, she was a member of the PBKD study section at NIDDK-NIH and currently member of KUDF study section and participated of more than 25 special emphasis NIH panel and as ad-hoc reviewer for additional study sections, and DoD revision groups. Dr. Mas is an external reviewer for the European Science Foundation, Research Grants Council Hong Kong, among other international funding agencies.

 

Dr. Jennifer Melaragno is an abdominal transplant clinical pharmacy specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center and has been practicing in transplant for over 10 years. She earned a doctorate of pharmacy degree from the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences after which she pursued PGY1 and PGY2 training at Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. Following her residencies, she practiced as a clinical specialist in lung transplantation for three years at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. She joined the abdominal transplant team in Rochester in 2014.

Jennifer has been actively involved in the American Society of Transplantation since 2015. She was elected for a 2 year term and served as a Member-At-Large on the Executive Committee of the AST Transplant Pharmacy Community of Practice. Additionally, she has served as a member on multiple workgroups including Organ Donation, Education and Programming, and the Transplant Pharmacy Adherence Consortium. Through her committee work she has developed multiple educational resources and patient education materials, including collaboration on a Transplant in 10 video. Jennifer currently serves on the TPAC workgroup, and will soon be participating in a multicenter trial to better understand the natural history of medication management after transplant.

 

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.

He studied medicine at the Semmelweiss University in Budapest, Hungary before going on to specialise in pathology and further in transplantation pathology and nephropathology. Before moving to Edmonton provided transplant pathology service at the Hannover Medical School, Germany. As a sub-specialized Transplantation and Renal Pathologist, Dr. Mengel is engaged in various international sub-specialty societies related to nephropathology and organ transplantation and has published widely in his field. 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 and epidemiology at Columbia University, New York and the director of clinical research for the division of nephrology. His clinical research is currently focused on improving access to care, reducing disparities and improving outcomes for patients with advanced kidney disease and kidney transplants. In particular, he is interested in efforts to improve organ utilization and understand the influence of regulation and quality measures on healthcare systems. He is also the founding Deputy Editor of Kidney International Reports.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Kathleen Murphy is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Pennsylvania.  She received her medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School, and then completed her internal medicine residency, chief resident year, and fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Penn.  Her clinical time is primarily spent caring for immunocompromised patients on the transplant and oncology services. She also serves as the Associate Hospital Epidemiologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and enjoys teaching medical students, residents, and fellows through many educational avenues.  

 

 

 

Dr. Martin Oberbarnscheidt is a transplant immunologist with longstanding interest in the immunology of allograft rejection. The current focus of his laboratory is on local immune responses to allografts. This encompasses the role of resident memory T cells in the allograft, the formation and function of tertiary lymphoid organs in the graft, and the innate immune mechanisms responsible for initiating and perpetuating the alloimmune response. Over the past several years, he has made contributions to the mechanisms by which the innate immune system, specifically monocytes and macrophages, recognize allogenic non-self. They recently identified the Paired Immunoglobulin Receptor family as the mechanism by which monocytes recognize allogenic donor MHC-I, which leads to formation of memory monocytes. He is currently investigating the role of tertiary lymphoid organs in chronic rejection. Chronic rejection is an unresolved clinical problem whose pathogenesis is not well understood. This research is also relevant to diseases in which TLO are prominently featured; for example, autoimmunity and cancer.

 

Dr. Ronald Parsons' clinical focus is kidney and pancreas transplantation. He completed an abdominal transplant surgery fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, in 2014. He received his MD and graduated magna cum laude from the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in 2005 and completed his general surgery residency at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012. While at Penn, he did a research fellowship in the Harrison Department of Surgical Research. He investigated mechanisms of B cell tolerance after islet transplantation, humoral tolerance after donor lymphocyte infusion, and plasma cell development after murine cardiac transplantation. At Emory Transplant Center, Dr. Parsons is the surgical director for pancreas transplantation and the
surgical quality champion for the kidney/pancreas programs.

 

Dr. Anjana Pillai is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, where she serves as the Medical Director of the Liver Tumor Program and the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program. Her clinical and research interests are in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). She is also the co-founding director of a highly successful single topic national conference, HCC Therapeutic Agents, which focuses on the multidisciplinary approach to the changing therapeutic landscape in HCC. She is actively involved in several national professional organizations focusing on liver disease and liver transplantation including American Society of Transplantation (AST), American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS).

 

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 the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he directed the Advanced Heart Failure & Cardiac Transplant Program. In 2015, he was appointed Director of Heart Failure and Transplantation for the Mount Sinai Health System. 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 editorial boards of JACC, JACC Heart Failure, the Journal of Heart & Lung Transplantation and the Journal of Cardiac Failure. He serves on the AST Board of Directors, is a member of the Georgetown Medical Alumni Board 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.

 

Leonardo V. Riella, M.D. Ph.D. is the Harold and Ellen Danser Endowed Chair in Transplantation and Associate Professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Riella is the Director of Kidney Transplantation at MGH and a Senior Investigator at the Center for Transplantation Science. He has completed his Nephrology training at the combined BWH/MGH fellowship program and then completed his Transplant fellowship at the BWH. Subsequently, he started his laboratory at the BWH and later moved to MGH, under the Center of Transplantation Science.  

Dr. Riella’s research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of immune regulation, investigating glomerular disease recurrence post-transplantation, and on the development of novel therapies to promote immune tolerance. He has established a large biobank of human samples and has led the TANGO consortium, a multicenter consortium focused on investigating glomerular disease recurrence and biomarkers of rejection. His lab uses multiple animal models of auto-immune kidney disease and transplantation including kidney, heart, lung and skin murine transplants to better understand the immune response and investigate specific interventions to control the immune response and prolong transplant survival.  

Dr. Riella has over 120 publications in major journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Circulation, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Immunology, Transplantation and American Transplant Journal. He is currently Section Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation. He has received multiple awards, including the Young Innovator Award of the American Society of Transplantation (AST), the 2016 Basic Science Career Development Award from the AST, and the 2020 Harvard Faculty Teaching Award. He is currently funded by the NIH, Department of Defense, Industry and Philanthropy. Find out more about at Dr Riella's research here.  

 

 

Dr. Deirdre Sawinski is a transplant nephrologist and epidemiologist at Weill Cornell.  Her research interests include donor and recipient selection as well as predictors of long-term transplant outcomes, including infection, malignancy and immunosuppression complications.

 

 

Josef Stehlik, MD, MPH is Christi T. Smith Professor of Medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is Co-Chief of the Advanced Heart Failure section and Medical Director of the Heart Transplant Program at the University of Utah Health Center and the Salt Lake City VA Medical Center.

Dr. Stehlik has been active in clinical work, research and education. He serves as Director of the International Thoracic Organ Transplant Registry of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation. He has received extramural research funding in the areas of heart failure, heart transplantation and mechanical circulatory support from the American Heart Association, the Veterans Health Administration, the Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation, the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation and other funding agencies.  He is author of over 200 peer-reviewed publications and a number of book chapters.

 

 

Mr. Darren Stewart, Principal Research Scientist with the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), has a passion for answering hard questions and solving real-world problems using analytical methods.  He earned a master’s degree in statistics from North Carolina State University in 1998 and has over 20 years of experience as an applied statistician, the past 13 in organ transplantation and previously in the banking and aerospace industries.  He has worked extensively in collaboration with OPTN committees to inform allocation and other policy development, and his current research interests include optimizing deceased donor kidney utilization; identifying ways to improve the organ allocation system; measuring equity in allocation; and applying behavioral science to aid transplant clinician decision-making as a UNOS Labs principal investigator.  Mr. Stewart is the author of several publications in transplant journals and he has presented findings from numerous studies at transplant conferences.  He hails from central Connecticut and now lives in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. 

 

Nicole Theodoropoulos is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the Director of Transplant Infectious Diseases at UMass Memorial Medical Center. She completed her fellowship in Infectious Diseases with a focus in Transplant ID at Northwestern University in 2012. She is currently the Chair of the American Society of Transplantation Infectious Diseases Community of Practice and her research interests focus on donor-derived infections and prevention on infections in organ transplant recipients.  

 

Nicole Turgeon - I am a kidney and pancreas transplant surgeon.  I trained in General Surgery at the University of Massachusetts and subsequently completed a Multi-Organ Abdominal Transplantation Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin.

I recently joined the faculty at the University of Texas Dell Medical School to lead the Division of Transplantation and to initiate and build an abdominal transplant program.

As a member of the Emory University faculty I was an active kidney and pancreas transplant surgeon, researcher, teacher and mentor to undergraduates, medical students, residents and fellows.  I served as director of the Living Donor Program which included the development of Emory’s nationally prominent role in the National Kidney Registry paired donor exchange program.  I was also Surgical Director of the Kidney Transplant Program at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. 

My academic interests include organ donation and utilization, adult and pediatric renal transplantation, pancreatic transplantation, and HIV transplantation. I was as an Investigator and PI on numerous grants funded by the NIH and other organizations. 

I have been actively engaged in organ donation efforts serving as an Assistant Medical Director at Lifelink of Georgia Organ Procurement Organization.  I have a strong commitment to serving the transplant community through UNOS regional and national committee participation and have been a member of the UNOS Kidney Committee since 2012, recently completing my tenure as Chair.  I am currently Vice Chair of the UNOS Policy Oversight Committee.  I have also served on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Transplantation.

 

 

Dr. Katherine Vandervest is the Associate Director of Lung Transplantation at Baylor Scott and White-Baylor University Medical Center where she practices as a full-time transplant pulmonologist. She is also invested in clinical care and outcomes research as the Medical Director of ECMO for her institution’s robust ECLS program.

 

 

Dr. Elizabeth Verna is the Frank Cardile Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 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 as well as the Director of Hepatology Research for the Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases.

 

 

Blair C Weikert MD is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  His clinical and research focus is in Transplant Infectious Diseases and Immunocompromised Hosts.  In addition, he serves as Director of the Transplant ID Fellowship Track.  His interests also include Medical Education and Curriculum Development.

 

Dr. Alexander Wiseman is the Executive Director of Kidney Transplantation at the Centura Transplant Institute in Denver 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 and completed his nephrology and transplant nephrology fellowships at University of Colorado. His was previously a Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado where he was a faculty member for 19 years, and was the Medical Director for Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation Programs from 2008-2019.
Dr. Wiseman’s interests include access to transplantation, organ allocation and utilization, novel immunosuppressive strategies, and transplant therapies for diabetes. He has served as Chair for a number of ASN and AST supported meetings, has given over 200 invited lectures nationally and internationally, and is an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation.