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. 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.

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.

 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.