Dr. Vijay Gorantla is Professor (with tenure) of Surgery, Ophthalmology and Bioengineering at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Dr. Gorantla received his medical degree from the University of Health Sciences and pursued clinical training at King George Hospital. He completed postgraduate surgical training in Manchester, United Kingdom, followed by post-doctoral fellowships in microsurgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery and hand surgery at the University of Louisville and the Christine M. Kleinert Institute for Hand and Microsurgery, Kentucky.

Dr. Gorantla played a key role in the Nation’s first hand transplant program at the University of Louisville before joining the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where his efforts were fundamental to the institutional approval, federal funding, and establishment of the Nation’s second upper extremity transplant program. He served as Medical Director of the UPMC Hand Transplant program for 10 years and oversaw the management of 8 hand transplants including the Nation’s first male and female bilateral hand transplants. He joined the Wake Forest School of Medicine in 2017 as the Director of the Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation Program. He also served as the Chief Scientist for the RESTOR Program (59th Medical Wing, US Air Force), Office of the Deputy Commander of the United States Army Institute for Surgical Research, at the Brooke Army Medical Center.

Dr. Gorantla is Past President of the International Society of Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation which is the largest, global alliance for reconstructive transplantation. Dr. Gorantla is also founding member and board member of the American Society for Reconstructive Transplantation. He is the current Chair of the OPTN/UNOS VCA Committee and is the immediate past-Chair of the Transplant Regenerative Medicine Community of Practice at the American Society for Transplantation. Dr. Gorantla served two terms on the Membership and Professional Standards Committee as the VCA subject matter expert and on the Leadership and Innovation Council at the Organ Donation and Transplantation Alliance.

Dr. Gorantla currently serves as the Co-Director of the Clinical Organization Network for Standardization of Reconstructive Transplantation (CONSORT) program, which is a multi-institutional, congressionally funded network of national and international Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation (VCA) centers, and associated collaborators. Under the guidance of the National Academies, CONSORT will build consensus in standardizing clinical protocols and Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) for face and hand transplantation and assessing those protocols in multi-institutional clinical trials.

Dr. Gorantla’s academic interests relate to translational and clinical research in regenerative surgery, tissue engineering and reconstructive transplantation to address the critical needs of service men and women with traumatic injuries. As a surgeon-scientist, over the last decade, he has been continuously funded by the Department of Defense for over 15 years in convergent technologies that involve disruptive or transformative strategies in the restoration or rehabilitation of disabilities secondary to complex limb loss, traumatic brain injury or vision loss. Dr. Gorantla has a Master's in Medical Management (MMM) from the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon University focused on healthcare innovation in areas of digital health, health economics, telemedicine, precision medicine, pharmacogenomics, and predictive analytics.

Dr. Gorantla is a Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation, the Transplantation Society, American Society of Reconstructive Microsurgery, World Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery, the Plastic Surgery Research Council, and the Kleinert Society.

Dr. Cendales, the only person in the United States to have completed formal fellowship training in both Hand and Microsurgery and Transplant Surgery, is a Professor of Surgery and the Director of the Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Cendales helped organize the first VCA team in the U.S. and participated in the country’s first two hand transplants. She was subsequently the first surgeon accepted into the Transplant Surgery and Immunobiology Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). During her time at the NIH, Dr. Cendales established and published a model of VCA in nonhuman primates and has one of the largest experiences in VCA in non-human primates reported in the scientific literature. She organized the first international symposium on VCA histopathology at the International Banff Conferences on Allograft Pathology leading to the published classification system now used as a standard for clinical reporting of rejection worldwide. Prior to joining Duke, Dr. Cendales established the VCA program at Emory University and led the multi-disciplinary team that performed Georgia's first hand transplant in March 2011. While at Duke, she established the VCA program and led the multi-disciplinary team that performed North Carolina’s first unilateral and the first bilateral hand transplants in May 2016 and in November 2018 respectively. Dr. Cendales is the Principal Investigator of clinical and translational studies.

Dr. Cendales is a Past-President of the International Society of Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation Society (ISVCA), the past Chair of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Vascularized Composite Allograft (VCA) Committee, an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Transplantation and of Clinical Transplantation, the Past-Chair of the American Transplant Congress, the Past-Chair of the American Society of Transplantation VCA Advisory Board, she is a past Councilor at Large of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, a past Secretary of the OPTN. Dr. Cendales was appointed to a U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee to guide the development of protocols and standards operating procedures for face and hand transplants (2024-2025). She has co-authored numerous scientific manuscripts, abstracts, and invited publications. Similarly, Dr. Cendales has made countless presentations at national and international meetings.

Dr. Siemionow, a scientist, and microsurgeon is a Professor of Orthopedics and Director of Microsurgery Research at The University of Illinois at Chicago. She specializes in microsurgery, hand surgery, peripheral nerve surgery and transplantation. She is pioneering development of new technologies for tolerance induction in transplantation and enhancement of nerve and muscle regeneration.

Prior to her UIC appointment, from 1995 -2013 she was Director of Plastic Surgery Research and Head of Microsurgical Training for Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Plastic Surgery.

She served as a President of the American Society for Reconstructive Transplantation, President of the International Hand and Composite Tissue Allotransplantation Society and President of the American Society for Peripheral Nerve. She is a member of the Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM).

She has received numerous honors, including high praise as Principal Investigator for the world’s first, Composite Facial Allograft Transplantation protocol; in 2008, she led the team that performed the first near-total face transplantation in the United States.

Dr. Siemionow has over 340 scientific publications. She has edited four plastic surgery textbooks, two popular science books, and has contributed to over 150 published book chapters. She trained over 150 Residents and Fellows. She holds several patents on therapies for enhancement of nerve regeneration and novel chimeric cell therapies for restoration of muscle function. Dr. Siemionow is a member of the American Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery, American Society for Peripheral Nerve, American Society of Plastic Surgeons, American Association for Hand Surgery, American Society for Reconstructive Transplantation, The Transplantation Society.