Jonathan Fridell, MD is the Chief of Abdominal Transplant at Indiana University (IU). Having completed medical school and surgical training at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and Abdominal Transplant Surgery Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, PA, he joined the faculty at IU in 2002. He has actively participated in all aspects of the abdominal transplant program including adult and pediatric liver, kidney, intestine, multivisceral and pancreas transplantation. Originally recruited to assist with the growing liver transplant volume and to assist with the initiation of the intestine/multivisceral transplant program, he is best known for his contributions in the field of pancreas transplantation. His research is mostly focused on outcomes following pancreas transplantation and he has authored ~200 manuscripts and book chapters and is currently Deputy Editor for Clinical Transplantation, the IPITA representative as Deputy Editor for Transplant Direct and an Associate Editor for AJT. Dr. Fridell also has a long history of participation with the OPTN/UNOS including two terms as the Chair of the Pancreas Transplant Committee and currently as the Counselor for Region 10. He was an invited participant in the first world Pancreas Transplant consensus conference in Pisa, Italy. He has participated in the IPITA Education committee and launched the History of Transplant interview series. He is currently chairing the IPITA Pancreas Transplant Interest Group and will be organizing the pre-meeting pancreas symposium at the upcoming IPITA/IXA/CTRM joint conference.

Angelika C. Gruessner, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Medicine/Nephrology at SUNY Downstate Health Science University, Brooklyn, NY and an Adjunct Professor at Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of Arizona. She received a PhD. from the Department of Theoretical Medicine, Ruprecht-Karl-Universität, Heidelberg, Germany. For more than 30 years, she is actively engaged in the field of pancreas and islet transplantation. She serves as the director of the International Pancreas Transplant Registry (IPTR) and publishes annually the newest developments in this field across the globe. Since IPITA’s founding in Amsterdam, she attended and actively presented at each single IPITA meeting.

Her goal is to educate and inform the transplant community and the interested public about the newest developments in beta-cell replacement therapy. She eagerly distributes the most recent available information for all interested parties. Dr. Gruessner has a publication record of more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and is the co-editor of the second edition of the text book on “Pancreas Transplantation”. For the last 2 years, she has been an active member of IPITA’s education committee. For her engagement, Dr. Gruessner received the 2019 Richard Lillehei Memorial Lecture Award.

Dr. Witkowski is an active clinical surgeon scientist. He arrived to the University of Chicago in 2009 after research and clinical fellowships at Columbia University. He serves as Director of Pancreas and Islet Transplantation and Director of the Transplant Surgery Fellowship.

Dr. Witkowski is recognized both nationally and internationally as a leader in clinical transplantation and islet transplantation. His efforts are represented scholarly publications regarding clinical islet transplantation with over 150 published articles and book chapters. He founded Islet for US Collaborative in 2020 and has been the senior author on multiple consensus position manuscripts with global leaders. He has served as the Co-Director of the University of Chicago Islet Cell Biology Core since 2013. Last year his program performed the highest number of allo-islet transplants in the United States. His laboratory has received over $8M funded research grants and he is Principal Investigator for several clinical trials.

Dr. Witkowski is an active clinical surgeon. He has led consistent growth of the pancreas transplant program with a currently reported 100% 3-year kidney graft survival for simultaneous kidney pancreas transplants. These efforts achieved threshold to be an American Society of Transplant Surgery approved fellowship training program for pancreas transplantation.