Valeria Raquel Mas, PhD, has been named Director of Transplant Research for the UT/Methodist Transplant Institute. She will also hold the Transplant Institute Endowed Professorship in Translational Research at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
Dr. Mas served as a tenured associate professor of Research Surgery at the University of Virginia, where she directed the Translational Genomics Transplant Laboratory, and previously was co-director of Transplant Research.
“We are honored that Dr. Valeria Mas has chosen the University of Tennessee Transplant Institute to become Director of Transplant Research,” said James D. Eason, MD, founder and program director of the UT/Methodist Transplant Institute and professor and chief of the Transplant Division in the College of Medicine at UTHSC. “She is nationally and internationally recognized for her research in transplant genomics and proteomics, and will bring an entire team to direct the UT Transplant Research Institute.”
Dr. Mas has been a leader in numerous transplant societies, and most recently was elected as a councillor for the International Liver Transplant Society, said Dr. Eason, who holds the Endowed Chair of Excellence in Transplant Surgery at UTHSC. Over roughly a dozen years, he has built the transplant institute into ranking among the top liver transplant programs by volume in the country. It performs approximately 260 to 280 transplants a year, totaling more than 2,500 transplants since he began. The Transplant Institute recently added live donor liver transplants.
Dr. Mas received a BS in biology at National University of Cordoba in Argentina, as well as master’s degrees in immunology and clinical biochemistry. She was awarded a PhD in biochemistry from National University of San Luis in Argentina.
She is a Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation and has received numerous national and international awards in the field of liver transplantation and research. Her research interests include transplant immune biology, kidney transplantation, liver transplantation, epigenetic modifications and gene expression regulation, and translational research. She has extensive industry, foundation, and National Institutes of Health research funding.
Dr. Mas is a member of Women in Transplantation, the International Liver Transplant Society, the American Society of Nephrology, the Argentinean Society of Transplant and many other organizations. She is associate editor of Renal Pharmacology and the American Journal of Transplantation, and has published more than 150 papers and abstracts.