Children’s Hospital of Montefiore, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Assistant Professor of Surgery, Assoicate Surgical Director, Liver Transplanation
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Aleah 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 is one of the founding members and current chair of CONCORD, a national consortium focused on the impact of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) and ex situ machine perfusion (MP) 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 and novel therapeutic agents to rehabilitate organs to expand the available donor pool and improve access to safe transplant for waitlisted recipients. She co-founded the Transplant Revitalization Laboratory alongside colleague Dr. Peter Than to drive patient-centered, clinically impactful basic and translational research programs in organ transplantation, and to train future generations of clinician-scientists.

Division Head, Transplant & Advanced Hepatobiliary Surgery;
Surgical Director, Siragusa Transplantation Center;
Professor of Surgery (Organ Transplantation), Northwestern

Juan Carlos Caicedo, MD, FACS is Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a nationally recognized leader in pediatric and adult transplantation, living donor liver transplantation (LDLT), and advanced hepatobiliary surgery. He serves as Division Head of Pediatric Transplantation and Advanced Hepatobiliary Surgery and Surgical Director of the Siragusa Transplantation Center at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, and as Director of the Adult Living Donor Liver Transplant Program at Northwestern Medicine.

Dr. Caicedo leads a comprehensive abdominal transplant program spanning pediatric liver, kidney, intestinal, multivisceral, and thoracoabdominal transplantation, as well as adult living donor transplantation. His work focuses on designing transplant systems that reliably expand access and improve outcomes, demonstrating that disparities in transplantation can be reduced through intentional system design.

His academic and clinical interests include living donor liver transplantation (LDLT), graft optimization, split liver transplantation, and the integration of machine perfusion into complex transplant strategies. His group has performed the first reported U.S. experience combining normothermic machine perfusion with split liver transplantation in a RAPID strategy, demonstrating feasibility and defining a framework for expanding the clinical application of complex graft strategies.

He is the founder of the first Hispanic Transplant Program in the United States, an NIH-supported model that improves access and outcomes through culturally competent, data-driven care.

Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital
Houston, Texas, USA

Chun-Sing (Kevin) Huang, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Abdominal Transplantation at Baylor College of Medicine. He specializes in adult and pediatric abdominal transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery. Dr. Huang completed his General Surgery residency and Abdominal Transplant and HPB fellowship at the Baylor College of Medicine, where he earned multiple teaching, professionalism, and academic achievement awards, including the Raleigh Ross Scholar Award and induction into the Alpha Omega Alpha Society. His clinical and research interests include pediatric and adult liver transplantation, machine perfusion technologies, surgical quality improvement, and addressing health disparities in transplant outcomes. He played a central role in developing one of the first dedicated pediatric normothermic machine perfusion programs in the United States.