Dr. Francis L. Delmonico was born in New York on July 24, 1945. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology (cum laude) at Mount Saint Mary’s College in 1966 and a Doctor of Medicine degree from George Washington University in 1971. His initial general surgical training was under the direction of pioneer transplant surgeon Dr. David Hume at the Medical College of Virginia. In 1974, Dr. Delmonico interrupted his general surgical training to go to the Massachusetts General Hospital where he completed a two-year Clinical and Research Fellowship in Transplantation. He then returned to the Medical College of Virginia to continue his general surgical residency training, which he completed in 1978 as Chief Resident in Surgery. After serving for two years in the United States Navy as a Staff Surgeon at Walter Reed Medical Center, an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, and as Ship's Surgeon on the USS Independence, Dr. Delmonico was recruited to the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1980 as a member of the Transplantation Unit of the Department of Surgery. He was promoted to Associate Professor of Surgery at the Harvard Medical School in 1989 and to Visiting Surgeon (the Massachusetts General Hospital's highest surgical title) in 1997. Dr. Delmonico was promoted to Professor of Surgery at the Harvard Medical School in 2000. From 1990 until 2004 he was the Director of the Renal Transplantation Service at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Delmonico was a member of the Subcommittee on Human Research (Committee on Research) of the Massachusetts General Hospital, its Institutional Review Board for clinical investigation from 2001 to 2004. Dr. Delmonico has devoted most of his research efforts at the Massachusetts General Hospital to clinical investigation. In the early part of his career, he focused upon the management of recipient immunosuppression and more recently upon the clinical parameters which define the suitable organ donor. Dr. Delmonico was appointed Medical Director of the New England Organ Bank (NEOB) in 1995. Under Dr. Delmonico’s direction, the NEOB has undertaken several research projects, most notably an outcome study of organs transplanted from deceased donors who were bacteremic at the time of their death. This study removed a heretofore-absolute contraindication to organ donation, thereby expanding the organ donor pool for selected allograft recipients. Another focus of Dr. Delmonico’s organ donor interest has been the concept of death. He has been responsible for the development of the Donation after Cardiac Death initiative in transplant centers who are members of the NEOB. Dr. Delmonico has been awarded a Department of Health and Human Services Grant as the Principal Investigator of a project to study the acceptance of kidneys recovered from deceased expanded criteria donors. This study is funded until 2006. Dr. Delmonico has been the Medical Advisor to the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations and serves on it Medical Director’s Council. As Director of Educational Activities for the Transplantation Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Delmonico has had a significant role in the teaching of medical students, house officers, and postdoctoral fellows for the past decade. A formal relationship with the Pan American University School of Medicine has been established that enables one student from Mexico City to matriculate for one month in the Harvard Medical School course on clinical transplantation directed by Dr. Delmonico. Dr. Delmonico has been an invited lecturer and Visiting Professor in numerous cities and universities throughout the world including North and South America, Australia, China, South Africa and Europe. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications, either as original articles, reviews, commentaries or book chapters. Dr. Delmonico has been a Board Member of the American Society of Transplantation (AST). He is the recipient of its Distinguished Service Award. Dr. Delmonico currently serves on the Council of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS). He has served as the Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the ASTS. As the current Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the Transplantation Society (International), Dr. Delmonico convened an International Forum on the live Kidney donor in Amsterdam the Netherlands, in April 2004, and on the liver lung, liver, intestine and pancreas donor in Vancouver Canada, in September 2005, with participation of over 100 physicians and surgeons from 44 countries around the world. Dr. Delmonico is a member of the American Surgical Association. Dr. Delmonico is a former member of the Advisory Committee on Transplantation to the United States Secretary of Health, and he served as the Chair of its Subcommittee on Clinical Issues. He has also served as Chair of the Subcommittee on Informed Consent, Donor/Recipient Selection and Evaluation of the New York State Commission on quality improvement in living liver donation and Chair of the New York State Commission on Expanded Criteria Liver Donors. Dr. Delmonico has served on the Board of Trustees and numerous committees of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) which is the contractor for the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN) of the United States. He is currently President of the OPTN/UNOS. Dr. Delmonico has served as a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the National Kidney Foundation. He is the recipient of the NKF Distinguished Service Award. He was also the recipient of the 1999 National Kidney Foundation (Massachusetts Chapter) Outstanding Physician Award. Dr. Delmonico has been responsible for the development and organization of national and international meetings on the live organ donor, the non-directed or “Good Samaritan” donor, the expanded criteria donor, the donor after cardiac death, the waitlist of candidates for kidney transplantation, and a national conference on acute humoral rejection of renal and cardiac allografts. Dr. Delmonico has been a consultant for Medscape Transplantation and the National Catholic Bioethics Center. He is an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation and reviewer for many medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of the American Association of Nephrology, and Surgery. He is a current member of the Editorial Board of Transplantation.