2024 Board of Directors Election

Voting for the AST Board of Directors will open on April 22, 2024. All eligible voters have been sent emails with directions on how to place votes. If you did not receive this email, please check your spam folder. To ensure email delivery, add [email protected] to your accepted sender list. The online voting site will close at 11:59 pm ET on May 28, 2024. Election results will be announced during the AST Town Hall on Monday, June 3, 2024. If you have questions about voting, please review our frequently asked questions. Members will vote for President-Elect, Treasurer, and three Councilors-at-Large, and will vote to accept or reject bylaw revisions recommended by the Council.

David Foley, MD, FACS, FAST, FAASLD
Jonathan Maltzman, MD, PhD, FASN, FAST
Jamil Azzi, MD, PhD, FAST
Lisa Coscia, RN, BSN, CCTC
Paolo Cravedi, MD, PhD
Darshana Dadhania, MD, MS, FAST
Daniel Kreisel, MD, PhD
Thomas Schiano, MD, FAST

President-Elect

David Foley, MD, FACS, FAST, FAASLD

I am the Folkert O. Belzer Chair in Surgery and Professor and Chair of the Division of Transplantation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. I am the Program Director of the Abdominal Transplant Surgery Fellowship, Surgical Director of the Liver Transplant Programs at UW Health and the William S. Middleton Veterans Hospital, and Director of the UW Health Renal Auto Transplant Program, a program aimed at treating patients with chronic pain secondary to Loin Pain Hematuria and Nutcracker Syndromes.

My research efforts have been focused on identifying novel strategies to decrease ischemia reperfusion injury and increase the utilization of high risk deceased donor organs in liver and kidney transplantation. Some of these strategies have included identification of critical risk factors leading to poor outcomes after DCD liver transplantation, the augmentation of endogenous antioxidant pathways to mitigate hepatic IRI, and increased utilization of machine perfusion for deceased donor livers prior to transplantation. I have served as site Principal Investigator on multiple clinical trials aimed at testing novel therapies to improve outcomes after kidney and liver transplantation. During my tenure at the University of Wisconsin I have participated in training 36 transplant surgery fellows, many of whom hold national and international faculty positions in transplant surgery.

I have been a member of the AST since 2005. In 2010, I was appointed to the Liver and Intestines Advisory Council and in 2011 joined the Liver and Intestine and Community of Basic Scientists Communities of Practice. For six years (2011-2016) I served on the Executive Committee of the Liver and Intestine Community of Practice as Co-Chair, Chair and Past Chair. During this time our Executive Committee led several initiatives including the creation of the public policy, membership and education subcommittees. These subcommittees, that continue to exist today, were developed to enhance member engagement, and focus efforts on three critical missions of the AST: advocacy and public policy, educational growth, and expansion of societal membership. Through these early efforts and continued superb leadership, LICOP has become one of the fastest growing and engaged COPs in the AST.

In addition, I have been a member of the FAST Committee (2016-2020), OPTN/UNOS Committee (2017-2020), Governance Committee (2021, 2023 and 2024) and Program Planning Committee for the Cutting Edge of Transplantation (2015-2024) including Co-Chair Elect (2022), Co-Chair (2023), and Chair (2024). I have served on the AST Board of Directors as Councilor at Large (2017-2020) and currently serve as Treasurer (2022-2024). I am also a member of both the AST Executive Committee (2022-2024) and Joint Council for the AST and ASTS (2022-2024).

 

Treasurer

Jonathan Maltzman, MD, PhD, FASN, FAST

Dr. Jonathan Maltzman is a physician-scientist and transplant nephrologist at Stanford University and the Veterans Administration Palo Alto Health Care System.  He graduated with a BS in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology then completed an MD and a PhD in Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1997.  He trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago.  He then moved back to Penn to complete his nephrology fellowship and post-doctoral fellowship.  Dr Maltzman joined the faculty at Penn in 2005.  In 2015, he was recruited to Stanford University and the Palo Alto VA Medical Center where he is currently Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Basic Research in the Nephrology Division.

Dr. Maltzman’s academic interest is focused on understanding immune responses in transplantation.  His laboratory has been a pioneer in the use of conditional gene expression to study signal transduction in memory T lymphocytes and regulatory T cells. He is federally funded to study the interplay between infection and transplantation with ongoing projects to understand the T responses to CMV and BK virus in solid organ transplant recipients. He has co-authored numerous original scientific articles, editorials, review articles and book chapters.  He has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, Veterans Administration, American Heart Association and the AST.  Dr. Maltzman was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2012.  Dr. Maltzman is a previous recipient of an AST/Novartis, the AST/ASN John Merrill Transplant Scholarship grant, as well as the AST Basic Science Career Development and AST Basic Science Investigator Awards.

Dr. Maltzman has been a member of the AST since 2001 and was among the first group of Fellows of the AST in 2015.  He was the inaugural chair of the AST Community of Basic Scientists.  He has previously served on the Awards and Nominations Committee, the Basic Science Advisory Council, the FAST Committee, the Governance Committee.   He is a former chair of the Basic Science Grants Review Committee and the AST Research Network and was an AST Councilor-at-large from 2018-2021.   He currently serves on the Awards Committee, the Investment Advisory Committee and as the AST representative to the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies.  Dr. Maltzman has been active in AST educational programming having previously served as a member of the ASE planning committee, the CEOT executive committee including as co-chair of the 2015 CEOT, and the Future of Transplantation organizing committee.  Outside of the AST, Dr. Maltzman previously served as the Secretary/Treasurer of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies and on the Kidney Week Program Committee of the American Society of Nephrology.

Councilors-At-Large

Jamil Azzi, MD, PhD, FAST

Jamil R. Azzi MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Azzi is an immunologist who is leading a NIH funded laboratory that focuses on understanding the immune-regulatory arm of the immune system in transplantation, and autoimmunity with the goal of developing more targeted and safer therapeutic strategies. Dr. Azzi’s laboratory is also exploring multiple genomics and proteomics approaches to develop diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers in kidney transplant recipients and inflammatory kidney diseases. His work led to the development of ExoTRU test licensed to ThermoFisher. In addition to his busy science career, he never stopped seeing kidney transplant patients at Brigham and Women’s where he is currently the medical director of the kidney and pancreas transplant program and of the vascularized composite allo-transplantation (VCA) program.

Dr. Azzi served the AST in different capacities since 2008; He has been a member of the executive committees of multiple AST communities in practice. For one, he was a member and chair of the trainee and young faculty committee and of the community of basic scientists. Secondly, he was the chair and founder of the “Outstanding Questions in Transplantation Community of Practice,” which had more than 3000 AST members.  This community of practice played a leading role in bringing the transplant community together, to discuss critical unmet needs in transplantation today. Additionally, he was invited by the AST Board of Directors to join the Patient Summit Task Force, which organized the first transplant patient summit in Washington, DC, in 2017, in which he represented the basic scientists of the AST. A few other committees that he has served in include the Awards and Grants Committee, the AST Educational Committee, the Fellows Symposium, the Transplant Community Summit, and the Future of Transplantation Organizing Committee. Currently, he is the chair of the AST Scientific Research Network (SCIENCE) Review Committee, and he has also served as chair and reviewer on several abstract review committees, along with being a moderator at scientific sessions for the American Transplant Congress.

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Lisa Coscia, RN, BSN, CCTC

I received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Michigan and am a registered nurse in Pennsylvania. I achieved and have maintained my Certified Clinical Transplant Coordinator certification since 1996 and in 2022 was honored to be inducted as a Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation.  I have dedicated my entire career to the field of transplantation, starting as a nursing assistant and then as a transplant staff nurse, kidney-pancreas transplant coordinator, and have been with the Transplant Pregnancy Registry International (TPRI) for over 26 years. I am currently the Senior Nurse Research Coordinator for the TPRI maintaining the day-to-day operations, presenting TPRI data, and educating the transplant community regarding parenthood post-transplant.

My service to AST started in 2009 when I was asked to be a member on the “Workforce Analysis Task Force”. I continued my participation in 2011-2013 as the Chair of the Community of Allied Health Professionals. Then from 2014-2018 I was a member of the TIRN Grants Committee, where I learned so much about the activities of AST and the commitment to research. Following this I was elected as a Member at Large (2017-2019) to the Women’s Health Community of Practice.  I was then elected Co-Chair/Chair of the WHCOP (2019-2023) and continue now as Past chair (2023-present). I recently was appointed to the Community Education Committee (2023-present).  I have attended ATC since 1998 only missing 2 meetings since.  Attending ATC has helped me gain insight into transplant innovation and advances over the years. In addition to my AST activities,  I was also a past board member of the International Transplant Nurses Society (ITNS) 2014-2016.  I believe it is important to participate in other societies, I am also a member of TTS, ASTs, NATCO, ESOT, and ITNS.  I have been an abstract reviewer for ATC, TTS, ITNS, and the ASTS Winter Symposium.  I have been fortunate to author and co-author numerous publications and present nationally and internationally, on the topics of contraception and pregnancy after transplantation.

Paolo Cravedi, MD, PhD

Paolo Cravedi, MD, PhD is an associate professor and the director of the Translational Transplant Research Center (TTRC) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Dr. Cravedi’s work focuses on the role of locally produced complement in alloimmune response and on the identification of new therapeutic targets to prolong graft survival. His translational work has also included biomarker development for graft outcome prediction and tailoring immunosuppression in organ transplant recipients.

Dr. Cravedi has mentored over 25 postdocs, PhD, and medical students and he has published over 250 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals including, among others, the New England Journal of Medicine, Immunity, JEM, and JCI. He has been recognized for his prolific work and contributions to the field of transplantation with the AST basic science award 2023. Dr. Cravedi has also been chairing the mechanistic committee for CTOT (Clinical Trial in Organ Transplantation) studies, a cooperative research program of mechanistic trials in organ transplantation sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

His service to the American Society of Transplantation spans over 10 years. He is a Member of the AST Education Committee, a member-at-large of the Executive Committee of Community of Transplant Scientists (COTS), and he chaired the AST Fellows Planning Committee (2023). Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation, Dr. Cravedi has also been running the Work-in-Progress seminars for COTS, monthly meetings aimed at presenting early work from junior faculties in transplantation. 

Darshana Dadhania, MD, MS, FAST

I am a transplant nephrologist and a physician-scientist, currently serving as the Medical Director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant program at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) and as an Associate Director of the Immunogenetics and Transplantation (IGT) Center laboratory.

I began my service to the AST as an abstract reviewer and moderator in 2009. In 2014, I was honored to serve as the Co-Chair of the Kidney Pancreas Advisory Council and as the Co-Chair and the Chair of the newly formed Kidney Pancreas Community of Practice (KPCOP) in 2015 and 2019, respectively. It was during my tenure as the Chair of the KPCOP, that I was able to bring individuals with common interests together from different institutions to collaborate on various projects. We formed the Frailty workgroup, Failing Kidney Allograft workgroup, and Cardiovascular Disease workgroup in 2017 and published over 10+ collaborative manuscripts. I have also had the privilege of working with AST leaders to organize several consensus conferences and national meetings. I served as the co-chair of the consensus conference on Frailty in Solid Organ Transplantation (SOT) in 2018, and on Heart-Kidney Transplantation in 2019 and served as the Chair on Improving Cardiovascular Disease Care in SOT in 2019. I also served on the planning committee for Future of Transplantation meetings (2020-2023) and am currently serving on the planning committee for the American Transplant Congress (2021-2024) and the Medical Directors Forum (2023-2025). I was inducted as a Fellow of the AST in 2015 and currently serve on the membership committee of Fellow of the AST.

My contributions to the field of transplantation have emerged from my formal training in clinical investigations and translational research at WCM. My research has focused on immunological graft injury and BK virus-associated nephropathy. As an NIH-supported investigator, my translational investigations have led to the development of (1) non-invasive diagnostic and prognostic urinary biomarkers of renal allograft rejection, (2) novel cfDNA assays for identifying urinary tract pathogens, and (3) biomarkers of graft injury and fibrosis in the context of viral pathogens and alloimmune injury. I serve on the editorial boards of Transplantation and Nephrology Dialysis and Transplantation journals.

In my role as an associated laboratory director, I help support many transplant programs across multiple institutions. I have served on the medical board of the local OPO and local quality council. Nationally, I have served on the Advisory Committee for the UNOS Kidney Paired Donation Workgroup and currently serve on the AST Kidney Paired Donation Workgroup to evaluate the role of KPD in improving access to kidney transplantation. In 2024, I joined the ASN Transplant Workgroup, a transplant advisory group that collaboratively with the ASN Quality Committee and the ASN Policy and Advocacy Committee to improve access and equity.

As an individual invested in the mission and vision of the American Society of Transplantation, I envision a society that transcends boundaries, fosters collaboration across regions and institutions, ensures equitable access to life-saving transplants, and improves the lives of organ donors and recipients.

Daniel Kreisel, MD, PhD

Daniel Kreisel MD PhD is a tenured Professor of Surgery, Pathology & Immunology at Washington University in St. Louis, where he holds the G. Alexander Patterson MD / Mid-America Transplant Endowed Chair in Lung Transplantation. Since 2014, he has served as the Surgical Director of the lung transplant program at Washington University, which is one of the largest and most established lung transplant programs in the world. In addition, he serves as the Scientific Director of the Transplant Center at Washington University / Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He obtained his MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a PhD in Immunology from The University of Pennsylvania. He completed his training in Surgery at The Hospital of The University of Pennsylvania and his training in Cardiothoracic Surgery and lung transplantation at Washington University in St. Louis. His research laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis studies transplantation immunology with a particular focus on mechanisms that regulate ischemia reperfusion injury, rejection and tolerance after heart and lung transplantation. His laboratory has developed several experimental models (mouse lung transplantation; intravital imaging of transplanted mouse hearts and lungs) that have yielded new insights into transplantation biology. His research program has been continuously supported by federal grants (National Institutes of Health, The Department of Veterans Affairs) for almost two decades. He is also a principal investigator for a Clinical Trial in Organ Transplantation (National Institutes of Health) involving 16 sites in North America that investigates new approaches to immunosuppression for lung transplant patients. Dr. Kreisel has published over 320 peer-reviewed manuscripts, many of which have been published in high impact journals.  He is an elected member of The American Society for Clinical Investigation, The American Surgical Association and The Association of American Physicians. Dr. Kreisel has served the AST in many capacities in the past (Associate Editor for The American Journal of Transplantation; co-chair of the AST Research Network, member of AST Scientific Review Committee; AST Community of Basic Scientists, Co-Chair, Advocacy Group) and is currently the chair of the AST Research Network as well as a Deputy Editor for The American Journal of Transplantation.

Thomas Schiano, MD, FAST

I am a Professor of Medicine (with tenure) in the Division of Liver Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Medical Director of the Liver Transplant Program, Director of Clinical Hepatology, Medical Director of Intestinal Transplantation, and Medical Director of VCA Transplantation at the Recanati/Miller Transplant Institute at The Mount Sinai Medical Center. I performed my residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, followed by fellowship training in Clinical Nutrition at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center, Gastroenterology at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia and Hepatology/Liver Transplantation at Mount Sinai.

Membership in AST has always been an important part of my career. I value the principles of AST that stress diversity, inclusivity and the opportunities afforded to junior transplant faculty and allied professionals to be stakeholders in our society.

My service to AST has included:

• Chair, Research Network Clinical Scientific Review Committee, 9/2023-8/2024.
• Trainee and Young Faculty Community of Practice Controversy Conference Participant, “Solid Organ Transplantation in the Elderly: How (and if) we should do it?” 2023-2024.
• Psychosocial and Ethics Community of Practice, 2022-2024.
• Trainee and Young Faculty Community of Practice, 2022-2024.
• Co-Chair, Research Network Clinical Scientific Review Committee, 9/2022-8/2023. • Chairman, FAST Committee, 2022-2023.
• Member, Heart/Liver Transplant Consensus Working Group, 2022.
• Member, Research Network Scientific Review Committee, 2019-2022.
• Member, ATC Program Planning Committee Member, 2018-2022.
• Liver and Intestinal Community of Practice (LICOP), 2017-present.
• LICOP Intestinal Subcommittee, 2017-present.
• Fellow, 2016-present.
• Member, AST Taskforce on Liver Re-distributing, 2014-2015.

Through LICOP, I have been a mentor for several junior faculty as part of its formalized mentoring program. In addition, I have been an ATC abstract reviewer and co-chair on many occasions, and have been a regular speaker and session moderator at ATC.

Additionally, I have been involved in the following:

• Medical Advisory Board, LiveonNY Organ Donor Network, 2007-2023.
• Member, New York Consortium for Liver Transplant, 2019-present.
• UNOS Regional Review Board, Mount Sinai Medical Center Representative, 2008-2018.
• National Liver Review Board for UNOS, 2018-2023. • AASLD Ethics Committee, 2009-2011.
• UNOS Liver and Intestinal Organ Transplantation Committee Region 9 Representative, 2008- 2010.
• Chairman, UNOS Region 9 Review Board, 2008-2010. • AASLD Training and Workforce Committee, 2001-2004.
• ASTS Liver and Intra-Abdominal Organ Committee, 1999-2002.
• Ad Hoc Member, UNOS Ethics Committee, 1999-2000. • UNOS Region 7 Ethics Committee, 1997-1998.
• Societal member of AASLD (and Liver Transplant SIG), AGA, ASGE, ACG, ASTS, TTS, and ILTS.
•  Associate Editor, Hepatology, , Liver Transplantation, Clinical Transplantation.