Miami Engineering Career Development Associate Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
University of Miami, USA

Dr. Tomei is the Miami Engineering Career Development Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Miami. She obtained her M.S. in Materials Engineering from the Politecnico of Milan (Italy) in 2004, and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering and Biotechnology from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) in 2008. Dr. Tomei currently directs the Islet Immunoengineering Lab at the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) where she is applying her unique background in bioengineering and immunology to develop novel immunoengineering platforms to prevent rejection after islet transplantation and to promote antigen-specific tolerance for a cure of type-1 diabetes.

Head of the Laboratory of Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration
University of Geneva Technical Director of the Cell Isolation and Transplantation Center
University of Geneva Hospitals, Switzerland

Dr. Ekaterine Berishvili is the Technical Director at the Cell Isolation and Transplantation Center, Department of Surgery, University of Geneva Hospitals. She also leads the Laboratory of Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration at the University of Geneva. Her expertise is focused on cell-based therapies for type 1 diabetes, immune tolerance induction, and the bioengineering of the endocrine pancreas. She holds positions on the board of the ESOT and CTRMS. Dr. Berishvili is an active member of several scientific committees, including Breakthrough T1D beta cell replacement consortium, and serves on the editorial board of Transplant International as an associate editor. At the national level, Dr. Berishvili is a member of the Swiss Transplant Cohort Study’s scientific committee. She represents Geneva in the Swisstransplant working group specializing in pancreas, islet, and small bowel transplantation.

Professor of Transplantation at the Department of Surgery
The University of Sydney
Director of the National Pancreas and Islet Transplant Laboratories,
Westmead Hospital, Westmead, New South Wales, Australia.

Dr. Wayne Hawthorne is the Immediate Past President of IXA, the current of ACBMS, Chairman of the Xenotransplantation Working Group of TSANZ and Chairman of WSLHD AEC. Professor Hawthorne’s career has focused on treatments for Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), having established the laboratory and techniques to perform islet cell isolation for Australia's First Clinical Islet Transplant program. Paralleling the clinical program Professor Hawthorne has dedicated his research career to establishing Australia’s Islet Cell and Xenotransplantation research programs, obtaining ongoing NH&MRC and Breakthrough T1D grants for more than 25 years. He developed and has established the Westmead NHP facility and has extensive small and large animal surgical and anaesthetic expertise that few others have in Australia. He has decades of expertise in large animal models, including the use of NHP’s in research. He continues to oversee the islet and xenotransplant research programs at the Westmead facility and remains dedicated to continuing to develop and provide the most Ethical and humane ways to run medical research projects and ensure their translation to the clinic along with the training of many scientists, clinicians and surgeons.

A founding researcher of the Centre for Transplant and Renal Research at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research and The University of Sydney, he remains responsible for surgical research projects where he has supervised many students including; PhD, Masters, Hons and MD students. He continues to build on the success of his research work and his team have translated the transplantation treatments for T1D, being the first in Australia to perform both Clinical Allo and Auto islet cell isolation and transplantation and to perform islet after kidney and combined islet/kidney transplants into clinical patients. He has performed more than 330 clinical islet isolations and islet cell transplants in both adults and children as young as 4 years of age. He has >250 journal publications, 20 books and book chapters and >700 published proceedings along with presenting numerous International and National presentrations.

Professor of Surgery and Director of the cardiac xenotransplantation program
University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), Baltimore, MD.

Dr Mohiuddin previously served as Chief of Transplantation of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Research Program at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute / NIH. He held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and Rush University, Chicago. He has been involved in Xenotransplantation Research since 1991 and started xenotransplantation research programs at the NIH, Rush University Chicago, and UMSOM. He is Associate Editor for Transplantation and Frontiers in Transplantation. He reviews manuscripts for many other journals. He is also the past president Dow Graduate Association of North America. His achievements include several NIH and non-NIH grants during his academic career. He is a member of the executive committee of COTS and a member of the advisory council of TRM of the AST. Dr. Mohiuddin's career has been a testament to his pioneering spirit in Xenotransplantation. His groundbreaking contributions include demonstrating the most prolonged survival in heterotopic and orthotopic cardiac Xenotransplantation. He devised an immunosuppression regimen that significantly extended the lifespan of cardiac xenografts to nearly three years. His leadership extends to IXA, where he now serves as President, following four years as Councilor and a liaison to foster productive dialogue between the IXA and the FDA. His extensive publication record includes over 120 papers and more than 150 abstracts, and he has been a sought-after expert speaker on Xenotransplantation on numerous occasions. Dr. Mohiuddin's unwavering dedication to Xenotransplantation culminated in two significant milestones. On January 7, 2022, he achieved the First Genetically Engineered pig-to-human cardiac Xenotransplantation, a feat that marked a new era in the field. He then led the second xenotransplantation procedure in September 2023, further solidifying his position as a leader in the field. Both surgeries were successfully conducted at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Besides other awards, Dr Mohiuddin was picked by Nature Journal as one of the “Nature’s 10” in 2022. Ten people who helped shape science in 2022.