Mark A. Hardy, MD, PhD (Hon), FACS

Doctor Mark A. Hardy is Auchincloss Professor of Surgery, former Vice Chairman and Residency Program Director of the Department of Surgery, and Director Emeritus and Founder of the Transplantation Centre, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. His professional scientific career has revolved around transplantation and transplantation biology, with a major interest in alteration of donor immunogenicity, antigen presentation, and islet transplantation. He is a former Director of Vascular Surgery and Founder of the Transplantation Program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. In addition to his work in transplantation, in the earlier part of his career he made several contributions to the development of prosthetic vascular grafts and the development and study of biologic function of thymic hormones, both experimentally and clinically. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Hallym-Columbia International Surgical Education Fund, which he helped to create to support international exchanges of faculty between underdeveloped and developed countries.

Besides being a very busy general, vascular, and most recently primarily a transplant surgeon, he continues basic research in immunology trying to achieve tolerance to organ allografts in swine. Among his many honours and almost constant support by NIH funding for his studies, Dr. Hardy was President of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) in 1994, served three terms as Councillor of the Transplantation Society (TTS), and was an Editor of Transplantation for 15 years until 2015. He has published more than 380 articles and edited Xenotransplantation 25 (First International Xenotransplantation Symposium) and another book on Organ Replacement in Diabetes Mellitus. He is a member of numerous surgical and scientific societies including American Surgical Association, Society of Clinical Surgery and American Association of Immunology. He has received a number of prizes for his work, including the NIH Scholar Award early in his career.

He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates at Hallym University in Korea and at Warsaw University in Poland and was named Distinguished Alumnus of Albert Einstein School of Medicine and of Columbia University Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He has received numerous awards including the ASTS Pioneer Award and Francis Moore Mentorship Award, and The Shustra Prize in Immunobiology from India. He continues to focus on issues in surgical education and international health care, in addition to his research in tolerance induction.