Jeffrey Schiff

President

Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network
Toronto, ON

Dr. Jeffrey Schiff completed his medical school, Internal Medicine and Nephrology training at McGill University, followed by a fellowship in kidney and pancreas transplantation at McGill University Health Centre and Hôpital Notre-Dame. In 2004, he joined the Division of Nephrology and the Multi-Organ Transplant Program at the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network (UHN).  He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Schiff is a member of the Kidney Transplant Program and Medical Director of the Pancreas and Islet Transplant Program at UHN. He co-led the development of the renal transplant desensitization program and championed a system to improve the transfer of renal transplant recipients from the Pediatric Academic Multi-Organ Transplant Program at the Hospital for Sick Children to UHN. He has also worked with other organizations that play a role in transplant including Canadian Blood Services as the chair of the Pancreas/Islets Data Working Group and member of the Organ Donation and Transplantation Expert Advisory Committee and Information System Advisory Committee; Trillium Gift of Life Network; and the Ontario Regional Blood Coordinating Network in developing guidelines for the use of IVIg in transplant recipients.

Dr. Schiff is also extensively involved in transplant education. He is currently the Program Director for Adult Nephrology as well as Director of the Kidney and Kidney/Pancreas Transplant Fellowship at the University of Toronto, as well as having developed web-based educational resources in transplantation that are available free to all.

Jagbir Gill
Vice-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.

S. Joseph Kim
Past President

Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON

Dr. S. Joseph Kim is a staff nephrologist in the Division of Nephrology and Director of the Kidney Transplant Program at the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He is the Past President of the Canadian Organ Replacement Register Board of Directors, Chair of the Information System Advisory Committee at Canadian Blood Services, Vice-Chair of the Data Advisory Committee at the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, and the Associate Head of the Kidney, Dialysis and Transplantation program at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. Dr. Kim completed medical school, internal medicine residency, chief medical residency, and fellowships in nephrology and kidney transplantation at the University of Toronto. In 2008, he completed a PhD in epidemiology and a Masters in biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2020, Dr. Kim received his MBA from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. His research interests are in the areas of access to and outcomes of kidney transplantation using data from both centre- and population-based cohorts. His methodological interests include survival analysis and statistical models for causal inference.

Aviva Goldberg
Director

University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB

Dr. Aviva Goldberg is Section Head of Nephrology in the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health and Associate Dean, UGME Student Affairs, 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 is a director of the Canadian Society of Transplantation, co-director of the Professionalism program in the Undergraduate Medical Education department at the Max Rady College of Medicine.  She has published and lectured nationally and internationally on ethics, health policy and medical humanities subjects in transplantation, ethics and pediatrics.   She is a member of the International Pediatric Transplant Association ethics committee, and the ethics committees of Canadian Blood Services and the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology.  She recently co-edited the book Ethical Issues in Pediatric Organ Transplantation, the first book solely on pediatric transplant ethics.  She was awarded the 2018 Canadian Association of Medical Education’s Certificate of Merit.

Olwyn Johnston
Director

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).

Ana Konvalinka
Director

Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network
Toronto, ON

Dr. Ana Konvalinka was recruited in 2015, as a transplant nephrologist and a Clinician Scientist at Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. Dr. Konvalinka completed medical studies at the University of Ottawa in 2003. She then completed internal medicine and nephrology training in Toronto in 2008. She subsequently embarked on a PhD in basic science at the University of Toronto. Her PhD thesis addressed the effect of angiotensin II on the proteome of primary human proximal tubular cells, and the relevance of this effect in vivo. Following completion of her PhD in 2013, she went on to complete the clinical kidney transplant fellowship at Toronto General Hospital. Her main clinical and research interests are in antibody-mediated rejection and kidney allograft fibrosis. She utilizes systems biology approaches and proteomics to enhance the understanding of the mechanisms, derive novel markers and to repurpose drugs for treatment of kidney disease. Dr. Konvalinka is the director of the Multi-Organ Transplant biobank for kidney, pancreas and liver transplant programs. She is also the co-director of the Drug Discovery research group. She has received international research awards (the Human Proteome Project (2016), the American Society of Transplantation Faculty-Development Research Grant (2016) and the Advances in Organ Transplantation Award (2015)) and national research awards (Canadian Society of Transplantation Research Excellence Award (2020), Canadian Society of Nephrology New Investigator Lectureship (2017) and the KRESCENT New Investigator Award (2016)).

Nazia Selzner
Director

University of Toronto, University Health Network
Toronto, ON

Dr. Nazia Selzner is a Transplant Hepatologist, Medical Director of Live Donor Liver Transplant at the Multi-Organ Transplant Program, University Health Network, and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She is Scientist at the Institute for Medical Science (IMS) as well as at the Toronto General Research Institute (TGRI).

Dr. Selzner graduated from Medical School at the University of Paris VII, France and completed her Gastroenterology training and a Clinical Fellowship in Transplantation Hepatology. She obtained her PhD in 2003 at the University of Paris VII, France, after four years of research fellowship at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC and at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Dr. Selzner’s clinical responsibilities include assessment and evaluation of potential recipients and care of liver transplant recipients pre- and post-liver transplantation in Toronto. Her research interest is the mechanism of ischemia/reperfusion injury of the liver including mechanisms of reperfusion injury in diseased livers, such as fatty or aging livers. Dr. Selzner is focused on basic and translational studies on Ex Vivo Liver perfusion. 

Prosanto Chaudhury
Director

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.

Sacha DeSerres
Director

Laval University
Montreal, QC

Sacha De Serres received his MD from the University of Montreal, followed by FRCPC in Internal Medicine and Nephrology at Laval University. He then completed a 3-year Research Fellowship in transplant immunology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and received a Master of Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. He is currently Associate Professor of Medicine at Laval University and Nephrologist and CHU de Québec.

At the national level, he served as Chair of the 2018 joint CST-CBS-CNTRP-CBMTG Transplant Summit Scientific Committee, and as Chair of the CST Research Committee from 2015 to 2017. At the international level, he has been elected as Executive Member of American Society of Transplantation Transplant Diagnostic Committee for a 2-year term, from 2016 to 2018. He also served as a member of the AST Transplantation and Immunology Research Network Scientific Committee from 2015 to 2018.

His research program focuses on cell-based assays to identify over-immunosuppression and on the mechanisms of antibody-mediated rejection. Since 2011, he has received continuous funding from different agencies including Kidney Foundation of Canada, CIHR, CFI and FRQS. He currently holds a CIHR project grant as principal investigator and is co-chair holder of the Nephrology Research Chair at Laval University.

 Julie Strong

Director

Children's Hospital, HSC Winnipeg
Winnipeg, MB

Julie Strong is the kidney transplant recipient coordinator for the Transplant Manitoba-Pediatric Kidney program at the Children’s Hospital, Health Sciences Center in Winnipeg. She has worked in all areas of pediatric nephrology and have worked in transplant since 2008. Julie has a special interest in the development of educational materials and the facilitation of learning for children, youth and families experiencing CKD and moving to transplant.  Along with colleagues at the Children’s Hospital, Julie developed and launched the Kidney Twins© CKD educational materials and recently completed a pre-transplant educational program for our program. Julie published the “Little Heroes: How we live with Kidney disease” book and, was a chapter contributor (Nursing care of the child with a genitourinary disorder), in the first Canadian edition of “Canadian Essentials of Pediatric Nursing”.  In addition to preparation of children and families for transplant, her role also includes program development, and process and quality improvement projects.  Julie is a founding nurse and staunch supporter of kidney camp for children in Manitoba and have attended camp as a volunteer nurse since 1997.

Julie has been involved in several volunteer boards at the local and national level.  She has been involved with the CST since 2009 and believe strongly in the role the society takes as a leader in the transplant community.