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Transplant AI Symposium: A Vision for the Future.
Event Speakers
Dedication. Expertise. Leadership.
Dr. Mamatha Bhat
Dr. Mamatha Bhat is a Hepatologist and Clinician-Scientist at UHN's Ajmera Transplant Centre, and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She is a Scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. Dr. Bhat completed her medical school and residency training, including the Clinician Investigator Program, at McGill University. She then completed a Transplant Hepatology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, followed by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Fellowship for Health Professionals through which she completed a PhD in Medical Biophysics (U of T).
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The goal of Dr. Bhat’s research program is to improve long-term outcomes of liver transplantation through a precision medicine approach, using tools of Artificial Intelligence, RNA nanomedicine and systems biology to personalize the care of patients with HCC and NASH in the transplant setting. Her interdisciplinary program and team have been supported by CIHR, Terry Fox Research Institute, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Canadian Liver Foundation (CLF), among others. Dr. Bhat is Co-Lead of the Transplant AI initiative, sits on the Executive committee of the CDTRP and is incoming Chair of the International Liver Transplant Society Basic and Translational Science Research committee. She is currently Director of the Clinician-Scientist Training Program for the Department of Medicine, which includes over 20 trainees and ensures training of the next generation of CS in the DOM.
Dr. Aman Sidhu
Dr. Aman Sidhu is the Medical Director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program at UHN, 
and an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She completed medical school at the University of Ottawa, followed by residencies in internal medicine at the University of British Columbia and respirology at the University of Alberta. She also completed a master’s of science degree in epidemiology at the University of London in London, England. After additional fellowship training in lung transplantation at the Toronto General Hospital, she joined the Toronto Lung Transplant program as a staff respirologist. Her research interests include the implementation and evaluation of health technologies such as telemedicine/virtual health platforms to improve access to and quality of care for patients with lung disease. 
Dr. Alexadre Loupy
Dr. Alexandre Loupy is a French nephrologist, a university professor and hospital practitioner at the Necker Hospital of the Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris, in the kidney transplant department. He is known for his discoveries on the topic of graft rejection. His approach proposing innovative methodological tools has led to a better understanding but has also led to important changes in the international classification of graft rejection. These discoveries allow to improve the performance of clinical trials and to consider new therapeutic innovations in transplantation. 
Dr. Bradly Wouters
Dr. Bradly Wouters is an internationally recognized leader and cancer researcher. He became Executive Vice President of Science and Research at UHN in 2016 and prior to that served as the Interim Director of Research at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre since 2014. He joined UHN in 2008 as Senior Scientist and Director of the Princess Margaret Hypoxia Program, and has held faculty appointments at the University of Toronto in the Department of Medical Biophysics and the Department of Radiation Oncology since that time. Prior to joining UHN, Dr. Wouters was Professor and Head of Experimental Radiation Oncology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. As EVP of Science and Research, Dr. Wouters is focused on creating an environment that incentivizes, facilitates, and rewards excellence in basic, translational, and clinical research across all elements of UHN.
Dr. Doug Simonetto
Dr. Douglas Simonetto is a physician specializing in gastroenterology and hepatology, with subspecialty certification in transplant hepatology.
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In addition to his clinical activities, Dr. Simonetto is active in research and education, providing mentorship to residents and subspecialty fellows. He is a federally funded investigator with a research program in Digital Hepatology. His program focuses on the development of innovative artificial intelligence-enabled tools for disease and outcome prediction in chronic liver diseases as well as clinical trials and translational research.
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Dr. Simonetto is also currently the program director for the Gastroenterology and Hepatology Fellowship program. He is a highly sought after speaker and has spoken on topics related to vascular liver disorders, portal hypertension and alcohol-related liver disease in venues across the country and abroad.
Dr. Andrew Sage
Dr. Sage is an Assistant Scientist with the Toronto Lung Transplant Program at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. His research is focused on identifying and translating novel biomarkers and medical devices to aid in surgical decision-making during lung transplantation. He has a keen interest in cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence as well as remote piloted aircrafts. In 2021 Dr. Sage was part of the team that completed the world's first delivery of a human lung for transplant via drone in downtown Toronto. Prior to joining the Toronto Lung Transplant Program, Dr. Sage completed a PhD at the University of Toronto in Pharmaceutical Sciences and an MSc and BSc in Biochemistry at McMaster University and Queen's University, Canada. " 
Dr. Rahul Krishnan
Dr. Rahul G. Krishnan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in Computer Science and LMP. He received his PhD from MIT advised by Prof. David Sontag where he was part of the Clinical ML Group. He received a BASc in Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and an MS from New York University. Rahul was previously a senior researcher at Microsoft Research New England. He is expanding the Artificial Intelligence education in LMP (alongside Dr. Bo Wang) and has recently launched a new graduate course on Machine Learning for Healthcare.
Dr. Yas Moayedi
Dr. Yas Moayedi completed medical school at McMaster University and did her medicine residency in Toronto. She then did a two-year postdoctoral training at Stanford University with the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Teuteberg and Kiran Khush. Her research work focuses on heart transplant outcomes and remote monitoring of patients after heart transplant/ventricular assist device .
Mike Brudno, PhD
Mike Brudno, PhD, is a Computer Scientist specializing in the use of computational methods for the analysis of medical data (Computational Medicine), working as a Professor at the University of Toronto and the Chief Data Scientist for the University Health Network (UHN), leading the DATA Team.  He is also a faculty member at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Scientific Director of HPC4Health, a private computing cloud for Ontario hospitals. 
Dr. Joe Cafazzo
Dr. Joseph Cafazzo is the inaugural Wolfond Chair in Digital Health and Lead at Healthcare Human Factors and eHealth Innovation at the University Health Network. As a biomedical engineer, Dr. Cafazzo observes healthcare delivery from the inside-out and works on ways to keep people out of hospital by creating technologies that allow for self-care at home.
Dr. Elmar Jaeckel
Dr. Elmar Jaeckel is a trained gastroenterologist/hepatologist as well as endocrinologist/diabetologist and transplantation specialist. He is Medical Director of the Liver Transplant Program at the Transplant Centre, University Health Network. He studied medicine at University of Hamburg, Yale University New Haven, University of California San Diego, University of Edinburgh and University of Sydney. He completed his medical training at the Hannover Medical School (MHH). He studied medical economics at the University of Applied Sciences in Hannover and received a bachelor as Medical Hospital Manager. He spent a four years postdoctoral research fellowship with Harald von Boehmer at the Harvard Medical School, Boston working on central and peripheral tolerance mechanisms. Since 2003, he has been leading the research group on immune tolerance and metabolic inflammation at the MHH. The group is focusing to establish tissue-specific tolerance in autoimmunity, transplantation and metabolic inflammation. Since 2008 he is attending for gastroenterology, hepatology, endocrinology and diabetology at Hannover Medical School. Since 2010 he has been the medical attending of the liver transplant program at MHH, one of the largest liver transplant programs within the Eurotransplant region. He was co-chairing the collaborative research center transplantation for 12 years (CRC738), the CRC on xenotransplantation (CRC TR127) funded by the German Research Foundation and the Integrated Research Center Transplantation (IFB-Tx) funded by Federal Ministry for research and education. Besides this he received funding from the German Research Foundation, Ministry of Health, European Community, Helmsley Foundation, and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He published numerous articles on viral hepatitis, autoimmune liver disease, autoimmune diabetes and transplantation tolerance. He developed tissue-specific regulatory T cell therapies for local tolerance induction. He has numerous patents on tolerance inducing therapies and is co-founder of Quell Therapeutics aiming to develop clinical therapies for tolerance induction with regulatory T cells. He started investigator-initiated trials and participated in clinical Phase II to VI trials.
Dr. Jed Gross
Dr. Jed Gross is a member of the Bioethics Program at University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, where his clinical practice supports the work of UHN’s Ajmera Transplant Centre. He also advises organizations involved in transplant governance, including Trillium Gift of Life Network and CSA Group. He is known for his legal contributions on the ethics and the policy challenges associated with biomedical innovation.
Dr. Atul Humar
Dr. Atul Humar is the Director of the Ajmera Transplant Centre and Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto. 
He is now the Past-President of the Canadian Society of Transplantation (CST).  He was elected to President of the CST in October 2015. In May 2018, he became a Fellow of the American Society for Transplantation (FAST).
Dr. Humar received his medical degree from the University of Ottawa. He completed his residency and did further training in Transplant Infectious Diseases in Toronto and Boston. 
Dr. Humar’s research interests are in virology with a focus on the pathogenesis of herpesvirus infections post-transplant. He is involved in both basic and clinical research assessing immunologic and virologic determinants of infection. 
He is now the Past-President of the Canadian Society of Transplantation (CST).  He was elected to President of the CST in October 2015. In May 2018, he became a Fellow of the American Society for Transplantation (FAST).
Dr. Bo Wang
Dr. Bo Wang has been appointed the chief artificial intelligence scientist of University Health Network (UHN), Canada’s largest network of research hospitals.  
An assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science and Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, Wang focuses his research on machine learning and computational biology.  
He is stepping into the role after the launch of the UHN AI Hub earlier this year, which envisions more accessible, efficient and personalized health care through the integration of AI technologies. 
Wang will lead research into how AI can use vast amounts of anonymized patient data collected from the Toronto area’s diverse population to improve care, according to The Canadian Press. In an interview with the news agency, he said he is looking to explore various AI applications, including the development of personalized treatment plans and automated generation of clinical notes. 
“The goal is to promote adoption of AI in health care,” Wang said in an interview. “We have lots of research but adoption is quite rare, and I want to change that.” 
Dr. Shaf Keshavjee
Dr. Shaf Keshavjee is a world-renowned thoracic surgeon-scientist with a history of breakthroughs and discoveries in lung transplantation. He is the current Surgeon-in-Chief of the Sprott Department of Surgery, the Director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program and Latner Thoracic Research Laboratories at UHN, and Professor of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Toronto. For Dr. Keshavjee’s achievements and leadership in the field, he has been appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour that recognizes outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation. Furthermore, he is a member of the Order of Ontario and has been awarded two Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medals. In 2020, he received the prestigious Governor General of Canada’s Innovation Award. Other notable recognitions include UHN's Inventor of the Year Award, Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Society of Transplantation. 
Dr. Muhammad Mamdani
Dr. Muhammad Mamdani is Vice President of Data Science and Advanced Analytics at Unity Health Toronto and Director of the University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine Centre for Artificial Intelligence Education and Research in Medicine (T-CAIREM). Dr. Mamdani’s team bridges advanced analytics including machine learning with clinical and management decision making to improve patient outcomes and hospital efficiency. Dr. Mamdani is also Professor in the Department of Medicine of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation of the Dalla Lana Faculty of Public Health. He is also adjunct Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and a Faculty Affiliate of the Vector Institute, which is a leading institution for artificial intelligence research in Canada.
Dr. Mamdani holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Michigan, a fellowship in pharmacoeconomics from the Detroit Medical Centre, a Master of Arts degree in econometric theory from Wayne State University, and a Master of Public Health from Harvard University with a focus on statistics and epidemiology. He has previously been named among Canada’s Top 40 under 40. Dr. Mamdani’s research interests include pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacoeconomics, drug policy, and the application of advanced analytics approaches to clinical problems and health policy decision-making. He has published over 500 studies in peer-reviewed healthcare journals.
Sandra Holdsworth - Patient Partner
Sandra uses her experience as a liver recipient to advocate for organ & tissue donation and mentors others on their healthcare journey. Sandra is a volunteer with Trillium Gift of Life Network and was Awarded the Community Champion Award in 2015, she served as Provincial Director of the Canadian Transplant Association for 8 years and is currently an active Patient Partner with the Organ Donation Transplant Collaboration headed by Health Canada.
For the last decade, Sandra has been a patient partner with the Canadian Donation Transplant Research Program (CDTRP) as co-lead on the Quality-of-Life Theme. She helps to determine research projects, design, recruit and assists with knowledge translation. She was on the Steering Committee of the CanRestore Committee, where they implemented several clinical research projects. Sandra has been a patient partner on several research projects, has done peer reviews, has been an author on position papers, and has been a co-applicant on published research projects. Currently Sandra is working on projects related to Engagement Evaluation and AI & Machine Learning.
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