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.

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.

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. 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.

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.