Dr. Daniel Doherty is a Higher Surgical Trainee in General & Transplant Surgery at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and current MRC & JDRF Clinical Research Training Fellow at the University of Manchester. His PhD examines the importance of the islet microenvironment for success in beta-cell replacement. Through travelling fellowships awarded by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and British Transplant Society, he has spent time at the Alberta Diabetes Institute, Edmonton in the Shapiro Lab. He has other active research interests in organ utilisation strategies and functional imaging of pancreatic allografts.

Dr. Rao is the Surgical Director for Organ Cryopreservation, Exogenic Organ Development & Transplant Immunology at the Division of Solid Organ Transplantation & Schulze Diabetes Institute, Department of Surgery, University of Minnesota. He is pursuing a surgeon-scientist track in abdominal organ transplantation. Dr. Rao's research is focused on sub-zero preservation of organs and cell clusters for transplantation to aid in recipient immunomodulatory therapies for desensitization and immunosuppression free transplantation. Dr. Rao is also involved in genetic engineering of porcine organs for xenotransplantation and preoperative prediction models for safety related to living donor liver transplant.

Dr. Barra completed her graduate training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2021, focused on type 1 diabetes (T1D) and islet transplantation rejection under the mentorship of Dr. Hubert Tse. Her thesis project focused on the use of tannic acid-containing encapsulation materials to protect islet transplants from immune-mediated rejection as a potential treatment for T1D. After completing her graduate studies, Dr. Barra joined the laboratory of Dr. Holger Russ at the University of Florida for her postdoctoral work. Her current research focuses on developing innovative approaches to protect pluripotent stem cell derived beta cells from allo- and autoimmune recognition using genome engineering technology. She also has a keen interest in elucidating the mechanisms governing negative selection of autoreactive T in a human setting.

Dr. Di Bella is currently serving as a Researcher at University of Padua and she is a Transplant Surgeon working at Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation Unit, in Padua (Italy). She completed her residency in General Surgery at the University of Padua, where she gained experience in clinical management of kidney and pancreas allograft recipients, clinical and basic immunology, AB0 incompatible living donor kidney transplantation and living donor transplantation in immunized patients, working in one of the most high-volume Transplant Center in Italy. She had part of her training as a Research Fellow at the Transplant Service - Department of Surgery - University of Illinois at Chicago. During her fellowship, she was involved in many research projects related to kidney and pancreas transplantation, donor nephrectomy, islet transplantation and small bowel transplantation. She completed a training in islet cell isolation in November 2021 and she actively contributed to start-up the Facility in Padua for pancreas islet transplantation. She is leading a multi-disciplinary project at the University of Padua, focused on the development of human islet transplantation in a model of type 1 Diabetes in immunodeficient mice to assess the potency of different islet purification fractions in autologous and allogenic transplantation.

Dr. Davide Catarinella is a specialist in Internal Medicine at the Unit of Regenerative Medicine and Transplantation, IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy. His research activity focuses mainly on the care of patients undergoing pancreatic islet transplantation. Moreover, his clinical activity also involves patients undergoing kidney and pancreas transplantation with a particular interest in regenerative therapeutic strategies post-transplantation in order to optimize long-term graft function.

He is actively involved in multidisciplinary clinical care programs dedicated to pancreas and islet recipients, and collaborates on translational research projects focused on understanding the mechanisms of graft dysfunction and beta-cell failure.

Dr. Catarinella is also engaged in the development of patient-centered strategies to improve outcomes and quality of life in transplant recipients, working closely with both clinical and research teams within one of the leading transplant centers in Europe.

Dr. Ahsen Chaudhry is an endocrinologist who completed his Endocrinology fellowship at the University of British Columbia. He is currently completing a Clinician-Investigator Fellowship with clinical training in pancreatic islet transplantation at Vancouver General Hospital alongside research training in the lab of Dr. Timothy Kieffer. He is involved in clinical trials of stem-cell derived islet transplantation. His main research area currently is investigating how serum microRNAs can be used to monitor cell death and natural history after islet (including stem-cell derived) cell transplant.

I am MD, PhD, Professor Associate of Nephrology in the University of Lille, France, passionate about cell therapy in kidney transplant recipients, especially to treat metabolic diseases. I am currently investigating two areas of research: beta-cell replacement therapy in patient with diabetes and a kidney transplant and parathyroid cell transplantation in patients with hypoparathyroidism and a kidney transplant.

Dr. Swati Mishra is the Director of the Islet Cell Isolation & Transplant Laboratory, TPIAT (Total Pancreatectomy with Islet Auto-Transplantation) program, and a Staff Scientist at the Brenden Colson Center for Pancreatic Care at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), Portland, Oregon. She has completed her early graduate studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India, and earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology from the University of Massachusetts (Interdisciplinary & Multicampus degree program; Boston, Worcester, Lowell, Dartmouth). Her doctoral work involved the developed biocompatible photopolymerizable hydrogels and a 3D printing technique for in-situ encapsulation and culture of mammalian cells within the hydrogels. Later, she joined Rutgers University and worked in collaboration with the US Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR) as a Postdoctoral Researcher. There, she developed a multifunctional polymer-lipid-based nanoparticle delivery system for siRNA to treat Heterotopic Ossification (HO) in the combat victims of the Afghanistan war. She has later joined OHSU and significantly contributed to developing a nanoparticle platform technology for the antibody-mediated targeting of beta cells. She has joined OHSU’s Brendon Colson Center for Pancreatic Care in 2020. In the TPIAT program, her overarching goals is to improve isolated islet yield, develop a method to test islet potency from the pancreas with complete acinar cell atrophy and study the effect of intrapancreatic fat, fibrosis, and calcification on the health and function of isolated islets. Her research interests involve developing targeted non-viral drug and gene delivery formulations to induce targeted proliferation in beta cells (in vitro or in vivo) to replace the pool of insulin-producing cells for islet auto-transplantation. In addition, she is interested in developing nanomedicine-based targeting approaches for the early diagnosis and treatment of pancreatitis, Type 1 Diabetes, and Pancreatic Cancer.

Dr. Paraish Misra completed his clinical training in Nephrology at the University of Toronto, following which he began a research fellowship in the lab of Dr. Cristina Nostro. In parallel with this research, he is pursuing additional training in the care of Kidney/Pancreas/Islet transplant recipients at the University Health Network (Toronto), one of the largest transplant centers in North America. His main area of focus is studying the role of HLA in the immunogenicity of human pluripotent stem cell-derived islets, with an additional interest in defining pathways of endocrine specification in stem cell-derived pancreatic progenitors. His long-term interest is in developing and translating cellular therapies to improve clinical outcomes of patients with diabetes and diabetic kidney disease.

Dr. Hiroaki Mitsugashira is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Surgery at UCSF. His research focuses on developing extrahepatic transplantation strategies using both primary islets and stem cell-derived islets. With a clinical background in transplant surgery, he aims to advance novel cell replacement therapies for diabetes.

Dr. Catherine Parmentier is a transplant surgeon from Mexico City. She completed her medical degree at the National Autonomous University (UAM-X) and her General Surgery residency at La Raza Medical Center (IMSS). She then pursued a Transplant Surgery Fellowship at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition – Salvador Zubirán (INCMNSZ) and is board certified in both General and Transplant Surgery in Mexico. After working as a procurement and transplant surgeon in Mexico, she joined the University Health Network in Toronto in 2021 as a research fellow under Drs. Reichman and Selzner. She became a research associate in 2022 and began a Master of Science at the University of Toronto in 2024. Dr. Parmentier has been part of the clinical islet isolation team since 2021. Her current research focuses on normothermic ex vivo machine perfusion of the pancreas using large animal models.

Dr. Peloso is actually Junior attending at the Department of General Surgery and Transplantation at the University Hospital of Geneva. After graduating from the University of Pavia (Italy) in 2010, he underwent a dual clinical and scientific parallel training. It included rotations from Pavia to various Italian hospitals to become a board-certified abdominal surgeon (2017). During this period he also performed a basic science research fellowship at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine - WFIRM (North Carlina, United States) focused on organ bioengineering (pancreas/islet, liver and kidney) applied to transplantation as a novel solution to the organ shortage. Through this research, he achieved a Ph.D. in experimental medicine and microsurgery in 2015. Once back in Europe, he started my experience in Switzerland at the University Hospital of Geneva, with a 3-year appointment with the University of Geneva (as chef de Clinique Scientifique) in the Transplantation and Hepatology Lab. His current research focuses on the creation of bioengineered organs that could eventually make long-term transplantation of these lab-grown organs a reality. Besides, he is striving to develop new strategies in the application of organic bioengineering in the field of general surgery. Indeed, regenerative medicine represents the "next evolution of medical treatments" and, with its potential to heal rather than to merely treat, is expected to revolutionize healthcare.

Dr. Karthik Ramanathan is an assistant professor of transplant surgery at the University of Minnesota. He received his medical degree from UT Southwestern. He completed surgical residency at Indiana University and fellowship at the University of Minnesota. His clinical focus is on multiorgan transplantation as well as pancreatectomy with islet auto transplantation for chronic pancreatitis. He is very interested in work on increasing access to and utilization of pancreas transplant grafts as well as in optimizing the yield of islets recovered from even damaged and fibrotic glands. He is very excited to join the Young Investigator Committee.

Dr. Hanne Scholz is a senior scientist in the Department of Transplantation Medicine at the Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway. She is the director of the human islet isolation facility performing clinical islet transplantation for treatment of type 1 diabetes in Norway. Her research is devoted to improve and optimize islet isolation method, transplantation and clinical outcome. Currently, her research involves regenerative medicine projects such as the development of new cellular therapies for diabetes using stem cells and creation of functional mini-pancreas for “organ on a chip” platforms. She is elected as councilor of IPITA (2017-2021) and serve as the mentor of the Young Investigator Committee.