Following receipt of her PhD in Molecular Engineering from MIT, Dr. Ackerman spent a year as a Harvard Center for AIDS Research Fellow before moving to the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, where she now also holds appointments in Microbiology and Immunology, Chemistry, and the Program in Quantitative Biological Sciences.

The Ackerman laboratory conducts interdisciplinary research at the interface of biomedical and engineering sciences: developing high throughput tools to evaluate and enhance the antibody response in disease states ranging from infection to cancer in order to aid in therapeutic antibody and vaccine design and development. These efforts aim to define and improve upon the protective mechanisms of antibodies using approaches grounded in fundamental engineering principles and utilizing protein evolution, molecular biology, and mathematical modeling.

Dr. Mamatha Bhat is a Hepatologist and Clinician-Scientist at the University Health Network's Ajmera Transplant Centre, Scientist at TGHRI and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Bhat completed her medical school and residency training at McGill University. She then completed a Transplant Hepatology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, followed by a CIHR Fellowship for Health Professionals, through which she completed a PhD in Medical Biophysics.

The goal of Dr. Bhat’s research program is to improve long-term outcomes of liver transplantation by developing tools of Artificial Intelligence integrating clinical and 'omics data, and has been funded by CIHR, Terry Fox research institute, Canadian Liver Foundation, American society of Transplant among others.

She has published over 155 papers in journals such as Lancet Digital Health, Journal of Hepatology, JAMA Surgery, Gut and Hepatology. Dr. Bhat has been the recipient of recognitions such as the 2022 CASL Research Excellence award and the 2021 American Society of Transplantation Basic Science Career Development Award.

Dr. Bhat is also Director of the Clinician-scientist training program in the Dept of Medicine at U of T, Partnership & Engagement Lead for the Temerty Centre for AI Research and Education in Medicine (T-CAIREM), and past Chair of the International Liver Transplant Society Basic and Translational Science Research committee.

Kristi Coldwell serves as the Senior Advisor for Transplant Research Advocacy at the Organ Donation and Transplant Research Foundation of BC.

As a heart transplant recipient—having undergone the procedure as a teenager due to congenital heart disease—Kristi brings a profound personal understanding of the critical role research plays in advancing outcomes and improving quality of life for transplant recipients.

In her role at ODTRF, Kristi works to bridge the gap that often hinders patients, families and donors (PFD) from meaningful engagement in the research process. She believes that the active involvement of PFDs is essential to produce research that is both impactful and accountable. By fostering collaboration and advocating for inclusive practices, she strives to ensure that research initiatives are shaped by the lived experiences and perspectives of those most directly affected.

Dr. Juliet Emamaullee is an Associate Professor of Surgery and Immunology (Clinical Scholar) at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and an attending liver and kidney transplant surgeon at Keck Hospital and Children's Hospital-Los Angeles. She is also the Associate Chief, Division of Clinical Research, Department of Surgery. Dr. Emamaullee completed her PhD and MD degrees at the University of Alberta, followed by residency training in general surgery at Emory University and an abdominal organ transplant/HPB surgery fellowship at the University of Alberta. She is a surgeon-scientist with an NIH-funded translational immunobiology lab, exploring immunological phenotypes associated with liver transplant recipients. Dr. Emamaullee’s areas of expertise include computational biology, Fontan-associated liver disease, and living donor liver transplantation.

Robert L. Fairchild received a doctorate in immunology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the National Jewish Hospital for Allergy and Immunology in Denver. He was recruited to the Cleveland Clinic in 1990 and is currently a Professor of Molecular Medicine in the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and Professor in the Department of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Dr. Fairchild is Principal Investigator on multiple NIH-funded studies focused on the impact of endogenous CD8 memory T cell activity on allograft outcome and on mechanisms underlying antibody mediated rejection of kidney allografts using mouse models as well as samples from clinical transplant patients. He has been a participant in the Clinical Trials for Organ Transplantation Consortium since its inception and is Director of the Molecular Core for CTOT-09, CTOT-19 and CTOT-45. 

Dr. Fairchild has served terms as a member on 4 NIH study sections and is a former Chair of the Tumors, Transplantation, and Tolerance (TTT) study section and a current member of the NIAID DP2 study section. He served a 10-year term on the Steering Committee for the Immune Tolerance Network. Dr. Fairchild is a past Deputy Editor for both the American Journal of Transplantation (14 years) and for the Journal of Immunology (4 years) and is a current editorial board member for Kidney International, JCI Insight, and the American Journal of Transplantation. For the American Society of Transplantation, he served a 5-year term on the Board of Directors, a term as Chair of the Basic Sciences Advisory Committee and is current Chair of the AST/ASTS Joint Task Force on Funding in Transplantation. For 8 years he served as Co-Chair for the annual American Society for Transplantation’s Fellows Symposium. For the American Association of Immunologists, he served a 4-year term on the Publications Committee and is a current member of the Clinical Immunology Committee.

Dr. Fairchild has previously trained 4 MSTP students in their PhD thesis work, all now with faculty positions in academic medical centers, and has 2 current MSTP students training in his lab. He is a member of the Steering Committee for the MSTP program at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He has also trained more that 30 post-doctoral fellows in transplant immunology with 3 current fellows in the lab.

Dr. Greenland is an Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF and Staff Physician at the San Francisco VA Health Care System. He has an undergraduate degree from Stanford, a PhD in Virology from Harvard, and an MD from the Harvard-MIT’s HST program. His research focuses on gene expression patterns from airway brushes that identify lung transplant recipients at risk for graft failure or death. The group aims to use airway brushing molecular diagnostics to accelerate the diagnosis of CLAD and tailor treatments to preserve transplanted lungs. Additionally, his work has uncovered mechanisms of epithelial cell reprogramming, dysbiosis, and the activation of T and Natural Killer cells in transplant recipients’ airways. Utilizing a comprehensive bio-repository and advanced techniques in cellular immunology, genomics, and transcriptomics, his group aims to enhance diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for lung transplant patients.

Peter S. Heeger, MD is a Professor of Medicine, Surgery and Biomedical Sciences and the Director Transplant Immunology Research in the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. His NIH-funded research focuses on basic and translational immunology relevant to transplantation. Basic science interests include deciphering mechanisms linking complement biology to T cell and B cell function and understanding mechanisms and barriers to tolerance induction, using murine models of organ rejection and graft vs. host disease. Dr. Heeger also oversees and performs multicenter clinical trials of kidney, heart, and lung transplant recipients, assessing biomarkers and novel therapeutic approaches to improve transplant outcomes.

 Dr. Ajay K. Israni is a Transplant Nephrologist, and Professor of Medicine with tenure and the Division Chief of Nephrology Division at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

He earned his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry with Highest Honors from Rutgers College at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He earned his M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine in 1995 with Honors in Genetics. He has been American Board of Medicine certified since 2001. Dr. Israni completed his Internal Medicine residency at Boston University School of Medicine and Chief Residency at Boston City Hospital. He then completed his Nephrology fellowship and Masters in Clinical Epidemiology at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Prior to joining UTMB, Dr. Israni was a transplant nephrologist at the University of Pennsylvania and then at Hennepin County Medical Center. He was a Professor of Medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center, University of Minnesota. His work included managing kidney disease patients, particularly kidney transplant patients. He was also the President of the Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute with an annual budget of over $50 million. He has also served as the Medical Director of the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients in Minnesota, a multi-million dollar contract to track outcomes on all solid organ transplant recipients in the United States. He is the currently the Senior Staff for Special Studies at the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

Dr. Israni has been recognized for his contributions to medical research. He has been the Principal Investigator of several R01 grants from the several federal agencies. He has received multi-million dollar grants and contracts from the National Institute of Allergy and Immunology, National Institute of Diabetes, and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Agency for Health Research and Quality, and the Health Resources and Services Administration focused on improving results of kidney transplantation and improving the lives of patients with end stage kidney disease. His current R01 is focused on assessing the role of the microbiome on immunosuppression drug metabolism. He has published over 200 manuscripts based on his research.

During my career as an academic surgeon, I have had the privilege of leading and/or participating in a diverse portfolio of hypothesis-driven research projects. These projects have centered on the immunology of surgery and transplantation, including both cellular and antibody-mediated immune responses. 

During my training I studied the response of hyper-sensitized recipients to allogeneic liver transplantation, and am currently studying means of reducing immunologic memory that might allow more successful transplantation in sensitized recipients. This immune response involves pathways of coagulation, antibody-mediated rejection, and cellular rejection and current work in my lab involves these three pathways. 

The other major focuses of my work have been co-stimulation blockade and immune cell depletion as approaches to immunologic unresponsiveness or tolerance. My research group has been involved in translational and clinical research to develop these mechanistic tools for the benefit of human organ transplant recipients.

Dr. Deepali Kumar is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Toronto Transplantation Institute, University of Toronto, as well as Director of the Ajmera Transplant Centre at the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada. 

She is a consultant in transplant infectious diseases and her research interests focus on infections in transplant recipients including the impact of viruses and vaccines in the transplant population. Dr. Kumar has published over 250 scientific papers and mentored many trainees. 

She has held leadership roles in the Canadian Society of Transplantation and is a Past-President of the American Society of Transplantation. Dr. Kumar is also Chair of the Canadian Standards Association Committee on Cells, Tissues, Organ Transplantation.  

Dr Larman trained in physics and bioengineering at UC Berkeley, and then in genetics and materials science at the Harvard-MIT graduate program in health sciences and technology, where he developed Phage ImmunoPrecipitation Sequencing in Steve Elledge’s lab. He then did his postdoc at Scripps in Pete Schultz’s lab, where he combined multiplexed molecular assays with liquid handling automation.

Dr. Larman joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2014, where he is currently an Associate Professor in the Immunology Division of the Pathology Department. There he directs the Laboratory of Precision Immunology, which develops and deploys novel molecular assays to advance our understanding of human immune responses.

Dr. Larman trains students and postdocs from diverse backgrounds to develop new molecular techniques and analytical approaches. Alongside his academic career, Dr. Larman translates his research via company formation and currently serves as the Chief Science Officer at Infinity Bio, which is a leading provider of antibody reactome services.

Dr. Valeria Mas is a cellular and molecular transplant immunologist 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 and liver transplantation. Her research focus on two major aims: improve organ donor utilization by better understanding the donor organ biology and response to injury and increasing the longevity of organ grafts by evaluating the cells, cell-cell interactions and associated pathways that differentiate wound healing vs. impaired repair and loss of graft function.

She has extensive experience with NIH and industry funded investigator-initiated studies. She plays critical roles in multiple national and international committees including President -Elect of the International Liver Transplant Society (ILTS), ILTS Councilor, ILTS General Secretary, AST Community of Basic Scientists Executive Committee (2015-2017), AST Programming Committee, Chair AST Research Network Translational Scientific Review Committee (2019-2020), Education Committee (The Transplant Society (TTS)), American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week Education Committee (2021-2022), among many others.

She has more than 140 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, a member of KUDF study section, and currently an active member of DDK-D study section at NIDDK and participated in more than 25 special emphasis panel NIH revisions during last 15 years.

Dr. Mas is an external reviewer for the European Science Foundation, Research Grants Council Hong Kong, among other international funding agencies. She has received multiple award recognitions as a research investigator as well as a mentor from different National and International Scientific Societies and High-level Academic Institutions.

Dr. Aaron Meyer is an Associate professor of Bioengineering within the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also affiliated with the Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Program, UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Broad Stem Cell Research Center.

Dr. Meyer received his BS from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by an independent fellowship at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

In 2017, he joined the Bioengineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he uses proteomics and computational models to measure, model, and therapeutically manipulate cell-to-cell communication.

Dr. Harry Pickering is an immunologist and bioinformatician, he joined the UCLA faculty in 2024 as an Assistant Professor in the Division of Immunogenetics.

Prior to joining UCLA, Dr. Pickering obtained his BSc in Biological Sciences and Immunology at the University of Edinburgh and MSc in Molecular Biology of Parasites and Disease Vectors at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He completed his PhD in Infectious & Tropical Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Dr. Pickering was a post-doctoral research scholar in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at UCLA from 2020, initially as a Postdoctoral Researcher before progressing to Project Scientist in 2023.

Dr. Pickering’s current research focuses on understanding the interaction between the innate and adaptive immune responses in viral infection in immunosuppressed transplant recipients. His research utilizes modern systems immunology approaches including multiparameter immunophenotyping, transcriptomics, proteomics and epigenetics coupled with bioinformatics and computational modeling to understand disease mechanisms and for predicting clinical outcomes.

Dr. Bali Pulendran, Director of the Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection (ITI) is professor of pathology, and of microbiology and immunology, at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University, and his Ph.D., from the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, under the supervision of Sir Gustav Nossal. He then did his post-doctoral work at Immunex Corporation in Seattle. Prior to coming to Stanford, Dr. Pulendran was Charles Howard Candler Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine at the Emory Vaccine Center.

Dr. Pulendran has had a transformative impact on human immunology and vaccinology by pioneering the use of systems approaches to probe immunity to vaccination and infection in humans. In addition, Dr. Pulendran discovered that dendritic cells, one of the key cell types orchestrating the immune response, consist of multiple subtypes, which are functionally distinct. He also discovered the mechanisms by which microbial stimuli program DCs to modulate T-helper responses and helped establish Flt3-Ligand as the key growth factor for DCs in vivo. These groundbreaking findings helped define major paradigms in innate immunity and vaccinology.

Dr. Pulendran’s research is published in front line journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Medicine, and Nature Immunology. Dr. Pulendran has served on many advisory boards including that of Keystone Symposia and on the External Immunology Network of GSK. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of several honors and awards, including two concurrent MERIT awards from the NIH, the Albert Levy Prize, the ViE Award for the Best Research Team at the World Vaccine Congress, and is listed on Thomson Reuter’s list of Highly Cited Researchers, which recognizes the world's most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations.

Dr. Rosales is a pathologist and is the Associate Director of the Immunopathology Research Laboratory, Center for Transplantation Sciences, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Her fields of interest and expertise include renal pathology, experimental solid organ allo- and xeno-transplantation pathology, and vascularized composite tissue transplant pathology. She leads their laboratory’s bulk and spatial transcriptomics work for allograft pathology and is co-chair of the Banff Working Groups for Spatial Transcriptomics and for Xenotransplantation Pathology. 

Dr. Jesse Schold, PhD, MStat, MEd is a Visiting Professor of Surgery and Epidemiology at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. He is the Director of the Center for Outcomes Research and Policy and Associate Vice Chair of Policy and Outcomes for the Department of Surgery.

He received his undergraduate training at Emory University, two Masters degrees from North Carolina State University, and a Doctorate from the University of Florida.

Dr. Schold's research interests include large database analyses, quality metrics for healthcare providers, health services research, disparities in healthcare, and statistical and epidemiological methods.

Dr. Schold has authored over 360 peer-reviewed scientific publications with primary focus in the field of organ transplantation. He has served on numerous national committees and is a former Board member of the American Society of Transplantation. Dr. Schold has been a co- investigator on multiple studies from the National Institutes of Health, the Health Services and Resource Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Schold has given over 200 invited national and international lectures and peer-reviewed abstract presentations at scientific conferences. Dr. Schold is particularly focused on research that promotes access to care for patients with end-stage organ disease and utilizing empirical evidence most effectively to improve care delivery and healthcare policy.

Reed Shabman, Ph.D., has over 15 years of laboratory and scientific administrative leadership spanning infectious diseases and their vectors. His experiences with biomedical data have shaped a perspective that data science approaches and efficient data sharing are cornerstones of infectious and immune-mediated research and are required to effectively respond to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.

Dr. Shabman has effectively worked with experimentalists, informaticians and data scientists, illustrated by the almost 50 publications in his bibliography. Collaborative highlights include unique insights in a publication on Ebola virus and Marburg virus RNA editing, pathogen discovery through next-generation sequencing, and dissemination of microbial and vector datasets indexed in NCBI. In his prior role at NIAID’s Office of Genomics and Advanced Technologies (OGAT), he coordinated the Systems Biology for Infectious Diseases (SBID) Programto foster a community that integrates experimental biology, computational tools, and modeling across human pathogens. Within SBID, he coordinated Data Dissemination and Modeling Working Groups to establish best practices for disseminating and modeling biological datasets. Dr. Shabman also serves as a co-chair of the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group (IMAG) which promotes modeling and data science activities across the government and the research community.

Dr. Shabman received his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and performed postdoctoral studies at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Before joining NIAID, he was a Lead Scientist at the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) and an Assistant Professor at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI).

Dr. Sykes is the Michael J. Friedlander Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology & Immunology and Surgical Sciences (in Surgery), Columbia University.

Dr. Sykes is the founding Director of the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology and serves as Director of Research for the Transplant Initiative and as Director of Bone Marrow Transplantation Research at Columbia.

Dr. Sykes joined Columbia University in April, 2010 from Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where she was the Harold and Ellen Danser Professor of Surgery and Professor of Medicine (Immunology) and Associate Director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center. Dr. Sykes has over 39 years’ experience in transplantation biology and Type 1 diabetes research, including translational research from animals to clinical trials and mechanistic studies of human transplant recipients. She is currently Past President of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS). Dr. Sykes received numerous honors and awards, including the Medawar Prize in 2018 and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the Association of American Physicians. She was awarded the Barry Prize by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters in 2024.