Parsia A. Vagefi, MD, FACS graduated with a B.A. in Biology from Johns Hopkins University, followed by medical school at Yale. During medical school, Dr. Vagefi was a HHMI Research Fellow at MGH under the direction of Drs. David Sachs and Kazuhiko Yamada, where he investigated large animal models of allograft and xenograft tolerance. Dr. Vagefi returned to MGH for his general surgery residency, followed by transplant surgery fellowship at UCSF where he was awarded the American Society of Transplant Surgery Novartis Fellowship in Transplantation for his clinical research with Dr. Sandy Feng, investigating operational tolerance in recipients of simultaneous liver and kidney transplants. In 2011 Dr. Vagefi joined the MGH staff, eventually serving as Associate Surgical Director of Liver Transplantation and Surgical Director of Living Donor Liver Transplantation. Dr. Vagefi also held an appointment as a Senior Investigator at the Center for Transplantation Sciences, establishing an effort focused on the clinical application of liver xenotransplantation- with his group having now achieved the world’s longest survival of a pig liver in a non-human primate. In January 2018 Dr. Vagefi joined the UT Southwestern team as the Division Chief of Surgical Transplantation, and currently holds the Ernest Poulos, MD Distinguished Chair in Surgery.