Board of Directors

Aviva Goldberg
President

University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB

Dr. Aviva Goldberg is Professor and Section Head of Nephrology in the Department of Pediatrics at the Max Rady College of Medicine in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Dr. Goldberg received her MD from the University of Calgary, then went on to pediatric residency and completed part of her nephrology fellowship in Winnipeg. She completed her nephrology fellowship with transplant focus at the Feinberg School of Medicine (Northwestern University, Chicago, IL) where she also completed a clinical fellowship in Bioethics and Medical Humanities in 2006. In 2007 she was also awarded a Masters of Arts in Bioethics and Health Policy from Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Goldberg co-director of the Professionalism program in the Undergraduate Medical Education department at the Max Rady College of Medicine and leads several external committees including the CSA Subcommittee on Perfusable Organs , the Institutionalizing wellbeing Group of Canada's Health Workforce Well-being Plan, the Ethics Committee of the International Pediatric Transplant Association and the OSMB for the Chronic Kidney Disease in Children study. She has published and lectured nationally and internationally on ethics, health policy and medical humanities subjects in transplantation, ethics and pediatrics. She co-edited the book Ethical Issues in Pediatric Organ Transplantation, the first book solely on pediatric transplant ethics. She has received multiple teaching awards including the Canadian Association of Medical Education’s Certificate of Merit.

Prosanto Chaudhury
Vice-President

McGill University
Montreal, QC

Dr Chaudhury joined the Department of Surgery of McGill University in July 2007 after completing Fellowship training in Transplantation and HPB both at McGill and at Northwestern University in Chicago. He received my Master’s degree in Evidence-based Health Care from the University of Oxford in the Fall of 2007. Since His return, his clinical activities have been based at the Royal Victoria Hospital and have centered on the treatment of complex hepato-pancreato-biliary oncology and organ transplantation. He is currently cross-appointed to the departments of Surgery and Oncology as Associate Professor.

He has been an actively involved with both the Liver and Kidney pancreas committees of Transplant Quebec, and has been an on-call medical director with Transplant Quebec since 2008. Dr. Chaudhury has active interest in the use and outcomes of organs from DCD donors and has helped roll out DCD donation in Quebec. He was appointed Medical Director-Transplantation at Transplant Quebec in November of 2016. Dr Chaudhury has also been a longstanding member of the Canadian Liver Transplant Network and currently serves as its vice-president.

He has served the CST in several roles over the years, participating in the Standards Committee, the Annual Scientific Meeting Committee (chair and co-chair), and the leading practice guidelines committee.

Lakshman Gunaratnam
Vice-President

London Health Science Centre
London, ON

Dr. Gunaratnam holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in immunology from the University of Toronto, and a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Ottawa. At the same time, he pursued research on the biology of cancer in the laboratory of Dr. Stephen Lee. After finishing residency in Internal Medicine at Ottawa, he went on to complete his Fellowship in Nephrology and Kidney Transplantation at Harvard University. At Harvard, he completed a 3-year post-doctoral research fellowship with Dr. Joseph Bonventre, a world leader in the areas of kidney injury and repair. There, he studied specific aspects of the molecule Kidney Injury Molecule-1, which remains the current focus of Dr. Gunaratnam’s independent research program. He joined Western in 2010 as a Clinical-Scientist and transplant nephrologist.

As a junior investigator, Dr. Gunaratnam received highly competitive salary awards, including the KRESCENT Fellowship Award, the KRESCENT New Investigator Award and the Schulich Clinician-Scientist Award. He has built a successful independent research program focused on uncovering KIM-1 mediated mechanisms of repair after kidney transplantation, and the role of KIM-1 in renal cancer. He also serves as the site principal investigator for several prospective studies and randomized trials in transplant patients. His group has been steadily funded by CIHR and trained over 100 students in his laboratory. In recognition of his achievements, he was Awarded the Dr. Robert Zhong Endowed Chair in Translational Transplant Research in 2021 and the Dean’s Award of Excellence from Western in 2022.

Dr. Gunaratnam served as course co-chair for the Infection and Immunity block for the
Undergraduate Medical Education program for 10 years and taught immunology in the Graduate program at Western. He also teaches medical residents, and nephrology and transplant fellows.

Dr. Gunaratnam is the Medical Director for the Multi-Organ Transplant Program at London Health Sciences Centre. At the provincial and national levels, he influences the practice of transplantation in Ontario as a member of the Kidney Pancreas Working Group (Trillium Gift of Life Network), and the Canadian Transplant Advisory Committee (Canadian Blood Services) that are responsible for transplant policy decisions including organ allocation.

Dr. Gunaratnam’s goals are to improve the lives of patients with end-stage kidney disease through his research endeavors and leadership positions in transplantation. Dr. Gunaratnam has been a member in good standing since 2019 and has taught at CST-Astellas Fellows Symposium, on and off, since this time. He also served on the Scientific Meetings Committee in 2018 and co-chaired the 20219-2020 meetings with Dr. Ho). Together they were instrumental in organizing the highly successful 2019 CST Transplant Summit which was held at Banff, Alberta. Dr. Gunaratnam has been a dedicated peer reviewer for the CST-Astellas T3 competition for over 2 years. He is also a founding member of the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program which has strong ties with the CST. As in 2022, Dr. Gunaratnam will be MC for the 2023 CST meeting where he will be the receiving the 2023 CST Research Excellence Award.

Olwyn Johnston
Secretary

University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC

Dr. Johnston is a Transplant Nephrologist and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Her administrative roles include Medical Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program at Vancouver General Hospital. She is also the Medical Lead for the Living Kidney Donor Program at Vancouver General Hospital. She is Program Director for the Clinical Transplant Nephrology Fellowship Program at the University of British Columbia, where up to four transplant nephrology fellows are trained annually as part of an AST-accredited training program.

After receiving a Bachelor of Medical Science and Medical Degree at University College Dublin, Ireland, she completed an internal medicine residency in Dublin, Ireland and the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio. Her nephrology fellowship was completed in Dublin, Ireland followed by a Masters in transplant proteomics at University College Dublin. She then completed a transplant fellowship at the University of British Columbia Kidney Transplant Program, incorporating a Masters in Health Science at the University of British Columbia. She has been a member of the Division of Nephrology, University of British Columbia and a Transplant Nephrologist at Vancouver General Hospital since 2008.

In addition to her clinical, administrative and teaching roles, she also has a keen interest in clinical transplant research with involvement in national and international clinical trials. On a national level she has an active history of service to the CST, through committee membership (CST Grants and Awards Committee Chair (2017-currently) and Leading Clinical Practice Committee Co-Chair (2014-2017)). She has contributed to national kidney transplant policies through her membership of both the national Kidney Transplant Advisory Committee (KTAC) and Living Donor Advisory Committee (LDAC).

Rahul Mainra
Treasurer

University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, SK

Dr Rahul Mainra lives and works on Treaty 6 territory and the Homeland of the Métis. He is a transplant nephrologist and Lead of the Live Kidney Donation Program in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with the Saskatchewan Transplant Program and is Professor of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. Rahul completed his MD degree and Internal Medicine residency at the University of Saskatchewan, followed by a nephrology fellowship at Western University in London, Ontario. He then completed a Renal transplant fellowship in Sydney, Australia and a Masters in Medicine (Clin Epi) at the University of Sydney.

Rahul has been a member of the CST since 2008. He was a member of the research committee from 2013-2022 and the education committee since 2016. He was chair of the education committee from 2022-2025, and co-chair of the Scientific Meetings committee from 2023-2025. He has been involved in the annual Fellows Symposium since 2018 and has represented the CST as a member of the planning committee for the CDTRP’s Patient, Family and Donor Research Forum in 2020 and 2021. He was first elected to the CST Board in 2023 as Director and in 2025 as Treasurer.

Nationally, Rahul has been actively involved in various CBS projects and committees including the Kidney Transplant Advisory committee (Chair from 2021-2022) and is chair of the Highly Sensitized Patient Willing to Cross program and Optimizing Kidney Utilization working group. He is the Saskatchewan representative on the Organ Donation and Transplant Governance Systems Operator Advisory Committee for Health Canada.

Locally, Rahul has been active within the undergraduate medical curriculum at the University of Saskatchewan. He was Director of UGME for the Department of Medicine from 2016-2022. He has led the Kidney and Urinary Tract module for over a decade and developed a Solid Organ Transplant elective for final year medical students. He is currently Director of Faculty and Clinical Placements for the Master of Physician Assistant Studies.

Although education is his passion he likes to dabble in research and collaborate with national and international colleagues on various topics such as AMR, living donation, patient education and cardiovascular screening.

Jagbir Gill
Past President

University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC

Dr. Gill obtained his medical degree from UBC in 2001 and completed his internal medicine and nephrology training at UBC in Vancouver before completing a KRESCENT (Kidney Research Scientist Core Education and National Training) program funded clinical research fellowship at UCLA and Harvard University.  He completed his Masters in Public Health at Harvard in 2009 and returned to Vancouver to join the Division of Nephrology as a clinician scientist and transplant nephrologist at St. Paul’s Hospital

Dr. Gill is a researcher with the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcomes Sciences at UBC. He has extensively published original clinical epidemiological and health services research in high impact journals in the fields of organ donation and transplantation, with an emphasis on issues relating to transplant tourism, transplantation in the elderly, delayed graft function, and racial and socioeconomic disparities in donation and transplantation. Dr. Gill also holds a number of important international, national, and provincial leadership roles, currently serving as Councilor on the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group, Vice President of the Canadian Organ Replacement Register, and Medical Director of Data and Quality for BC Transplant.  

He has served the Canadian Society of Transplantation as Chair of the Annual Scientific Committee Meeting and Chair of the Communications committee, and is currently an active member of the Research Committee and the CST Fellows Symposium Planning Committee.

Karen Doucette
Director

University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB

Dr. Doucette is Professor of Medicine and Alberta Health Services Section Chief for Multiorgan Transplantation at the University of Alberta Hospital. After completing training in Infectious Diseases at the University of Manitoba she completed a clinical and research fellowship in Transplant Infectious Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 2004 and a Master’s in Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health in 2007. In 2022 she was certified through the Practice Eligibility route as a Diplomate of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Solid Organ Transplantation.

Her clinical and research interests are in infections in immunocompromised hosts, particularly solid organ transplant recipients, and viral hepatitis. She was the Medical Director of the Hepatitis Support Program from 2006-2015, Division Director of Infectious Diseases 2015-2024 and led the Transplant ID Clinical Program from 2004 to 2008 and the Transplant ID Fellowship Training Program from 2008-2020. She has published over 100 peer reviewed manuscripts, authored several book chapters, national and international guidelines in the fields of transplantation and viral hepatitis, and has delivered many invited national and international scientific lectures. In 2016 she was inducted in the second cohort of Fellows of the American Society of Transplantation and in 2021 was awarded the Canadian Society of Transplantation’s Clinician Recognition Award for contributions to program development, innovation and education, notably in the area of viral hepatitis and organ donation and transplantation. She is an editorial board member of Transplant Infectious Diseases and Associate Editor of JHLT Open.

Dr. Doucette completed Executive Education leadership training through the Universities of Calgary and Edmonton Schools of Business. She serves as a member of the Canadian Standards Association Technical Subcommittee for Perfusable Organs and a member of the System Operators Advisory Committee (SOAC), part of the newly formed Canadian governance structure for organ and tissue donation and transplantation. At the CST, Dr. Doucette was a member of the Education Committee from 2014-2021, contributing to development of educational programs including the Fellows Symposium. Dr. Doucette was also a member of the CST committee formed to seek accreditation of Transplant training by the RCPSC. Ultimately this led to the recognition of the Area of focused competence (AFC) in Solid Organ Transplantation and Dr. Doucette served on the RCPSC AFC SOT Committee 2012-2022.

Ngan Lam
Director

University of Calgary
Calgary, AB

Dr. Lam is an Associate Professor and Clinician-Scientist at the Cumming School of Medicine in the Divisions of Transplantation and Nephrology and a Transplant Nephrologist with the Southern Alberta Transplant Program at the University of Calgary. My program of research focuses on using integrated healthcare administrative databases to improve processes of care and clinical outcomes for living kidney donors and kidney transplant recipients.

James Lan
Director

University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC

Dr. Lan is an exemplary transplant nephrologist, immunogeneticist, and academic leader based at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital. His clinical expertise, combined with a deep commitment to advancing transplant immunology research and education, uniquely positions him to contribute to the CST’s mandate of promoting excellence in transplantation across Canada.

Dr. Lan’s training includes medical education at UBC, subspecialty fellowships in nephrology, and advanced immunogenetics and histocompatibility training at UCLA. Since 2020, he has served as Medical Director of the HLA Immunology Laboratory at UBC, where he oversees critical work that directly informs transplant compatibility and patient outcomes.

His research has significantly advanced the understanding and application of epitope-based HLA matching, innovative immune monitoring strategies, and personalized transplant allocation metrics. Notably, Dr. Lan has developed the ABO-adjusted cPRA metric, which addresses disparities in donor allocation for highly sensitized kidney transplant candidates, a vital initiative to improve equity and outcomes in Canadian transplantation.

In addition to his research and clinical roles, Dr. Lan has an active track record of contributing to CST. Since 2016, he has served as a faculty on the CST Fellows Symposium, delivering annual lectures and developing workshops that enhance the learning of transplant immunology for Canadian fellows. Since 2017 Dr. Lan has also been an integral member of the CST Grants and Awards Committee and continues to support activities that advance education and research in Canada. Dr. Lan is the current co-chair of the vital National HLA Advisory Committee (NHLAAC) and an active member of multiple expert working groups (Kidney Transplant Advisory Committee; Willing to Cross Working Group; ABOi-Lite Working Group) and the CST Council where he applies his expertise in HLA and immunogenetics to advance the implementation of novel technologies and transplant programs in Canada. His dedication to improving clinical care, education and mentorship further strengthens the Canadian transplant community’s capacity for innovation and knowledge dissemination.

Héloïse Cardinal
Director

Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal
Montréal, QC

Dr. Cardinal obtained her MD from Université de Sherbrooke, after which she trained as a nephrologist at Université de Montréal. She then pursed her studies with a MSc and a PhD in epidemiology at McGill University. She is a transplant nephrologist working at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), a professor of Medicine at Université de Montréal, and an independent researcher at Centre de recherche du CHUM (CRCHUM). She is a Fonds de Recherche du Québec (FRQ) clinician-researcher senior scholar.
Dr. Cardinal’s clinical activities are focused on the care of kidney transplant recipients. Her research program has 2 axes. The first one is translational and aims at identifying biomarkers of progressive renal failure after delayed graft function or rejection in kidney transplantation, including autoantibodies. The second aims at developing novel strategies to support clinical decision making at the time an organ is offered for transplantation. Her research work is funded, amongst others, by the Canadian Institute for Health Research and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Dr. Cardinal is the president of the kidney-pancreas committee at Transplant Quebec, and the co-director of the clinician-scientist residency program at Université de Montréal. She has been a member of the Canadian Society of Transplantation (CST) for over a decade, has served on the organizing committee for the CST annual general meeting (AGM) in 2024, and serves as the co-chair of the CST AGM for 2025 and 2026.

Cynthia Tsien
Advisor

Toronto General Hospital
Toronto, ON

Dr. Cynthia Tsien, MDCM, MPH, FRCPC, is the Education Director at the Soham & Shaila Ajmera Family Transplant Centre and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, at the University of Toronto. She also serves as Program Director of the AFC Solid Organ Transplant Fellowship Program, where she oversees training and curriculum development.

Dr. Tsien completed her residency in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at McGill University, followed by advanced training in hepatology and transplant hepatology at Toronto General Hospital. She did a research fellowship in sarcopenia at the Cleveland Clinic and earned a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.

Clinically, Dr. Tsien specializes in the care of patients with liver disease across the transplant continuum, including pre-transplant evaluation and post-transplant long-term management. She is recognized for her expertise in decompensated cirrhosis and educational leadership within academic transplant medicine.

Her research interests span sarcopenia, transplant outcomes, and medical education. She is deeply committed to advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion in transplantation and has led multiple institutional and national initiatives focused on improving access to transplantation for equity-deserving populations.

Through her clinical work, research, and leadership in education, Dr. Tsien remains committed to improving patient outcomes, strengthening the transplant workforce, and advancing equitable, high-quality liver transplant care across Canada.

Matthew Weiss
Advisor

CHU de Québec
Quebec City, QC

Matthew Weiss is a pediatric intensivist working in Quebec City at the CHU de Québec. He has multiple organ donation roles, including medical director of donation at Transplant Québec and president elect of the International Society of Organ Donation Professionals. His research interests focus on legislative and policy reform in organ donation and has participated in the development of several best practice guidelines. His peer reviewed publications touch on aspects of adult and pediatric donation and he regularly presents on these topics in international scientific conferences.

In recent years, Dr. Weiss has been an active CST contributor. He has made multiple well attended presentations at the annual meeting and moderated several other sessions. He has been a member of the scientific planning committee for the last two meetings, adding important donation perspective to the meeting content. Notably he is also the host of the CST podcast The Ultimate Gift, a new form of outreach developed by the education committee.