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Recognition Awards

Recognition Award Recipients

The 2025 awards cycle is closed - stay tuned for details about our 2026 awards cycle.


2024 Pioneer Award: Igal Kam, MD

Igal Kam, MD is the Head of the Division of Transplant Surgery, Department of Surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is also the Director of the Liver Transplant Program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. His journey in medicine began at the University of Pisa in 1969, before attending the Institute of Technology Israel, where he received his MD degree in 1976. 

He completed his Fellowship in Organ Transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he studied under transplant pioneer, Thomas E. Starzl, MD, PhD. 

Francis Moore Excellence in Mentorship in the Field of Transplantation Surgery Award

 

MB Majella Doyle, MD, MBA
Washington University in St. Louis

Maria B. Majella Doyle, M.D., M.B.A., F.A.C.S., is a Professor of Surgery, Mid-America Transplant and Department of Surgery Distinguished Endowed Chair in Abdominal Transplant, Director of the HPB Fellowship Program, and Director of Liver Transplant in the Division of General Surgery, Section of Abdominal Transplantation, and Executive Vice-Chair of the Department of Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as the Director of the Pediatric Transplant Program at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and the Director of Faculty Development. 

Dr. Maria Doyle received her Bachelor of Arts Degree at Trinity College in Dublin Ireland before completion of medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She then completed her surgical residency in the Irish General Surgical Training Program at the Royal College of Surgeons before completing a Research Fellowship in the Department of Academic Surgery at Cork University in Cork, Ireland. She completed a Clinical Fellowship in Abdominal Organ Transplant and HPB Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri and was subsequently recruited as a member of the Abdominal Organ Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgery team. Her interests at the university are focused on adult and pediatric hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery as well as liver transplantation. She focuses her clinical research interests on clinical outcomes, hepatocellular carcinoma, liver transplantation, and donor management. She is the author of over 120  peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.

Dr. Doyle has played an active role in U.S. national transplant surgery and HPB organizations.  She has an active role as a Councilor of the American Society of Transplant Surgery (ASTS).  She is also a former President of the Americas Hepatopancreaticobiliary Association (AHPBA) and is the current president of the Western Surgical Society (WSA).  She has been a mentor for many surgical trainees and is the treasurer of the Fellowship council which governs HPB fellowship training in the U.S. She has mentored and helped train 21 transplant fellows - many who have gone on to lead several programs throughout the US. She has also mentored numerous medical students and residents who have pursued careers in transplantation and HPB surgery. She has a passion for teaching, mentoring and sponsoring trainees that goes well beyond fellowship training. 

 

Pipeline Award

Daniela Ladner, MD, MPH
Northwestern University

Daniela Ladner, MD MPH is  Professor of Surgery at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. She is a liver and kidney transplant and hepatobiliary surgeon, and serves as the Associate Surgical Director for the Liver Program. She runs a NIH sponsored outcomes research lab with focus on cirrhosis epidemiology and transplant process improvement and has received over $22M in NIH funding. She studied medicine in Zurich, Switzerland, did a research postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University, and then trained general surgery and transplant surgery at Stanford. After completing her fellowship and a Masters of Public Health at Harvard she joined Northwestern University, where she now serves as the Vice-Chair of Research in the Department of Surgery. Dr. Ladner is the Founding Director of the Northwestern University Transplant Outcomes Research Collaborative (NUTORC) and is a dedicated teacher and mentor. She received many teaching and mentorship awards, including the Northwestern Medicine Mentor of the Year Award in 2023. She developed multiple training programs at Northwestern, including  a summer immersion program for high school, college and medical students to expose them both to clinical transplantation and transplant related research. She is the Program Director for the NIDDK sponsored T32 Transplant Surgeon Scientist Program, that trains residents and scientists in transplant related research and is the Founding Director of the NIDDK sponsored T35 Northwestern Summer Program for medical students, a research-intensive program focused in NIDDK related science. 

 

 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award

Juan Carlos Caicedo, MD, FACS
Northwestern Medicine

Dr. Juan Carlos Caicedo is a Hispanic Colombian Professor of Surgery at Northwestern Medicine who practices at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. He is a multi-organ adult and pediatric transplant and hepatobiliary surgeon. He serves as the surgical Director of the Northwestern Liver Transplant Program and the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program Director. Additionally, Dr. Caicedo is the Founder and Director of the Hispanic Transplant Program at Northwestern Medicine.

Dr. Caicedo completed his medical education and General Surgery residency at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He pursued further specialization through three fellowships at Northwestern Memorial Hospital/Children's Memorial Hospital, focusing on kidney, pancreas, and liver transplantation, pediatric abdominal organ transplantation, and hepatobiliary surgery/living donor liver transplantation. Since 2006, he has been a key faculty member at Northwestern Medicine.

In his clinical practice, Dr. Caicedo performs abdominal organ transplantation for both adults and children with end-stage organ failure, as well as advanced hepatobiliary surgery. Under his leadership, the Northwestern Memorial Hospital Liver Transplant Program has been the largest in Illinois. The program has achieved a 27% growth in liver transplants, setting a record with 138 liver transplants last year, thanks to the integration of advanced technologies such as normothermic and hypothermic machine perfusion and normothermic regional perfusion as well as partial liver transplantation, including reduced size, split, and living donor liver transplants and transplant oncology. The program has also excelled in performing complex multi-organ transplants, including heart-liver, lung-liver, and heart-liver-kidney transplants.

Dr. Caicedo is the founder and Director of the Hispanic Transplant Program at Northwestern Medicine, the first of its kind in the United States. By addressing the unique needs of the Hispanic community with culturally sensitive approaches, the program has significantly improved access to transplant care by 91%, increased living donor kidney transplants by 74% and reduced disparities between Hispanic and White living donor kidney transplantation by 70%. The program's success has led to a substantial increase in the proportion of Hispanic patients receiving kidney transplants at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, with nearly one-third of the patients now being Hispanic from almost a total of 400 kidney transplants done at Northwestern Memorial Hospital per year, up from 9% before the program's implementation. The program has organically grown to include over 60 transplant providers, making it the country's largest dedicated Hispanic Transplant team. 

Dr. Caicedo's efforts have been recognized with an NIH/NIDDK R01 grant to disseminate and implement the program at other transplant centers across the United States. The culturally tailored approach of the Hispanic Transplant Program has demonstrated significant clinical outcomes and financial impact. It operates at less than 1% of the overall kidney transplant program's cost while generating a notable return on investment. This model has inspired similar initiatives within other divisions at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and in multiple transplant programs across the country.

 

Rising Stars in Transplantation Surgery Award

Anji E. Wall, MD, PhD, FACS
Baylor University Medical Center

Dr. Anji E. Wall is a multi-organ abdominal transplant surgeon at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, TX.  She is an Affiliate Clinical Professor of Surgery at Texas A&M Medical School.  She is Vice Chair of Research at the Baylor Simmons Transplant Institute. She is the Medical Director of the Baylor Scott and White Transplant Center for Innovation, Science, Policy Research and Ethics (InSPIRE).  Dr. Wall’s medical training started at Saint Louis University, where she completed a combined MD/PhD.  Her PhD studies were in health care ethics, and her thesis focused on ethical challenges in global health, which was eventually published as a book entitled Ethics for International Medicine.  She completed her surgical residency at Vanderbilt University and her abdominal transplant fellowship at Stanford University.

As an academic bioethicist, Dr. Wall targets her research to address ethical challenges in clinical transplantation, with her most recent focus being on normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) for donation after circulatory death (DCD).  She has not only built strong foundational ethical arguments for the acceptability of NRP but also developed a clinical program at Baylor, created a technique for studying national NRP outcomes from UNOS data, and helped found the CONCORD consortium for the advancement of research on NRP transplantation in the US.  She has presented her work on NRP at national and international meetings, authored and coauthored several papers on this topic, and helped develop national guidance for NRP through the ASTS.  She also co-directed the ASTS-endorsed Abdominal NRP workshop in Dallas, which included over 50 transplant centers and OPOs from across the US and Canada and sparked the development of several new NRP programs.  

Dr. Wall’s vision for InSPIRE is simple:  to make transplantation better for patients, providers, and society.  

 

Babak J. Orandi, MD, PhD, MSc
NYU Langone

Babak Orandi is an abdominal transplant surgeon and obesity medicine specialist at NYU Langone, where he is also the founding director of the PeriOperative Weight Evaluation and Reduction (POWER) Clinic, which is focused on helping patients lose weight to facilitate solid organ transplant and living donation. He completed a combined Bachelors/MD program at the University of Michigan, where he graduated with distinction in research and completed a master’s in clinical investigation. He did his general surgery residency and PhD in clinical investigation at Johns Hopkins, followed by an abdominal transplant surgery fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. He also completed an obesity medicine fellowship at Weill Cornell. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, including in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, BMJ, and the Annals of Internal Medicine.

 

 

 

 

 

Vanguard Prize

Aleah L. Brubaker, MD, PhD
University of California San Diego

Dr. Brubaker is an MD PhD trained surgeon scientist who practices adult and pediatric liver and kidney transplant at UC San Diego Heath and Rady Children’s Hospital.  She completed her medical and doctoral training at Loyola University in Chicago and went on to complete her surgical residency and transplant fellowship at Stanford University. Dr. Brubaker is a founding member of CONCORD, a national consortium focused on the impact of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) on donation after circulatory death (DCD) abdominal allograft utilization and outcomes. Her clinical and research interests are centered on the ability of in situ and ex situ machine perfusion to metabolically rehabilitate organs in an effort to expand the available donor pool and improve access to safe transplant for waitlisted recipients. She was recently awarded the ASTS-TransMedics Faculty Perfusion grant to facilitate her research.  

 

Madhukar S. Patel, MD, MBA, ScM, FACS
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Madhukar S. Patel, M.D., M.B.A, Sc.M., F.A.C.S. is an abdominal transplant and hepatobiliary surgeon Southwestern Medical Center who specializes in the treatment of patients with end-stage liver and kidney disease, as well as those with benign and malignant diseases of the liver and bile ducts.  He is actively involved in the UT Southwestern Living-Donor Liver Transplant Program as its Surgical Director.  In addition to clinical care, Dr. Patel is actively involved in research focused on developing strategies to increase the number and improve the quality of organs available for transplant, as well as develop pathways to optimize clinical outcomes after liver transplantation. 

 

Advanced Transplant Provider Award 

Elaina P. Weldon, MSN, ACNP-BC
NYU Langone Health Transplant Institute

Mrs. Elaina P. Weldon is an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner and the Director of Research for the Transplant Institute and Department of Surgery at NYU Langone Health. Mrs. Weldon has worked in research for over 20 years. As an experienced clinical trialist, she has been involved in over 100 clinical trials, since expanding the research program over the past 8 years at NYU Langone Health. Elaina has served as an active member of ASTS for over 6 years having the privilege to serve as Co-Chair, Vice-Chair, and Chair of the ATP Committee. Elaina received the 2024 Veloxis ATP Provider Grant Award.

Mrs. Weldon’s work has been impactful in promoting access to organs through the utilization of Hepatitis C-positive organs in negative recipients, exploration of alternative organ preservation methods, and implementation of crossing immunogenic barriers using novel antibody cleaving agents. She has presented on the use of A2B blood type kidney transplantation to allow African Americans an additional avenue to transplantation. She was instrumental in protocol development, advanced clinical coordination, and complex project management of NYU Langone Health’s xenotransplant research as a future alternative to expanding the donor pool. Mrs. Weldon presented this work at the 2022 American Transplant Congress and American Society of Transplant Surgeons Winter Symposium. She has co-authored numerous publications, with two on xenotransplant in the New-England Journal of Medicine and Nature Medicine. Elaina and colleagues also published work in the American Journal of Transplantation, which examined the critical role of advanced practice providers on a multidisciplinary transplant team. 

Giving back to communities has always been important to her. She is consistently involved in leading community efforts to give back such as organ donor enrollment days, transplant outreach for World AIDS Day, and outreach to disadvantaged students to learn about transplantation. She is most proud of the volunteer initiative she created for ASTS to provide Care Kits for Caregivers of children at the Ronald McDonald House of South Florida.  

Currently, she is a second-year PhD student at the Florence S. Downs PhD Program. Her research raises cultural consciousness to eliminate bias in kidney transplant care through policy, education, and social support initiatives. She aims to harmonize patients, their care partners, and transplant providers to lower rates of mistrust and improve referral and access to kidney transplant waitlists for African American individuals. Elaina holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a Master of Science in Nursing and a Nursing Education Certificate from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and a Certificate in Clinical Trials Management and Regulatory Processes from the University of Chicago.

 

Anna H. Ha, BA
University of Colorado School of Medicine

Anna Ha is a medical student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a recipient of the Scholar's Research Year award through the Department of Surgery's Division of Transplant Surgery. She completed her undergraduate studies at Wellesley College, graduating magna cum laude and earning induction into Phi Beta Kappa.

At CUSOM, Anna serves as president of the Medical Students for Transplant Interest Group and as a Student Health and Wellness Representative on the Medical Student Council. Under the mentorship of Dr. Yanik Bababekov and Dr. Jesse Schold, her research focuses on the social determinants of health affecting solid organ transplant outcomes and allograft utilization. She is also involved in studies exploring novel perfusion technologies, including normothermic regional perfusion, to expand the availability of donor organs.

Outside of medicine, Anna enjoys playing volleyball and relaxing with her favorite Korean dramas.

 

Imad Aljabban, MD
NYU Langone Health Transplant Institute

Imad Aljabban is a second-year postdoctoral research fellow in the Griesemer Lab at NYU Langone Health's Transplant Institute and a general surgery resident at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He completed his graduate research training in the Madsen and Alessandrini Labs at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studied mechanisms of peripheral tolerance induction in a murine kidney transplant model. Currently, at NYU, his research focuses on understanding the immunologic and physiological barriers to clinical kidney and liver xenotransplantation using the decedent model. Imad aspires to become a transplant surgeon-scientist, with the goal of expanding access to life-saving organs.

C. Chime Karkhang, DNP, APRN, AGACNP-BC
Yale - New Haven Health Transplantation Center

C. Chime Karkhang, DNP, is an Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner with over a decade of clinical experience across diverse healthcare settings. Currently, she serves as a Transplant Surgery Nurse Practitioner at Yale New Haven Health. Her passion for transplant surgery stems from the unique excitement and profound impact of witnessing patients' lives transform dramatically after years on the waitlist. In this role, she works closely with liver and kidney transplant patients, particularly those from vulnerable populations, navigating the complexities of surgical procedures and the intricate pathophysiology of these vital organs.

C. Chime Karkhang earned her Doctor of Nursing Practice from Yale School of Nursing, where her research focused on health literacy among transplant patients. Her work highlighted the need for targeted interventions to address health literacy barriers and improve patient outcomes. Her academic background also includes a degree in Ethnic Studies, which provided a foundational understanding of systemic inequalities in healthcare.

She is an active member of the ASTS ATP Committee, contributing to the Volunteer Initiative and the ATP All Stars Project. The Volunteer Initiative subcommittee partners with local charities to give back to host cities during the ASTS Winter Symposium. The ATP All Stars Project subcommittee is developing a comprehensive website to consolidate key resources, offering a detailed guide and manual for ATP leaders to establish and expand their teams.

C. Chime Karkhang’s career is defined by her commitment to addressing healthcare disparities and promoting health literacy. Her contributions have been recognized with the 2022 American Society of Transplant Surgeons Advanced Transplant Provider Research Grant and the 2023 Yale University Milton and Anne Sidney Prize.

As an advanced practice provider, C. Chime Karkhang is dedicated to ensuring that patients and their families have the knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions about their care. She remains steadfast in advocating for equity and addressing structural racism in healthcare through her research, clinical practice, and leadership initiatives.