Finding Balance through Innovation

Dr. Siemionow is a Professor of Surgery, the Director of Plastic Surgery Research, and Head of Microsurgery Training in the Department of Plastic Surgery at Cleveland Clinic.

Her research interest over the past 20 years has been devoted to development of the field of Composite Tissue Allotransplantation (CTA) and tolerance inducing strategies. She pioneered the preclinical and clinical protocols for face transplantation and received the world’s first IRB approval in 2004. In December 2008, she was the lead surgeon of the first near-total face transplantation performed in the U.S.. She is the Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Tolera Therapeutics, a Cleveland Clinic spin-off company testing TOL-101 antibody in a clinical trial in kidney transplant patients. She has published over 300 scientific articles and book chapters, and has received multiple awards including the Folkert Belzer Award for Distinguished Research, in 2001, and the American Association of Plastic Surgeons’ James Barrett Brown Award, in 2004 and 2007, for her pioneering work in face transplantation. She has also been the recipient of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons’ 2010 Clinical Researcher of the Year Award, the Plastic Surgery Education Foundation’s 2010 Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Research Award, and the 2011 American Society of Maxillofacial Surgeons’ Best Clinical Paper Award. She is an active member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, The Transplantation Society, the American Society of Transplantation, and is the past President of the International Hand and Composite Tissue Allotransplantation Society, as well as the American Society for Peripheral Nerve. She is the President-Elect of the American Society of Reconstructive Transplantation (ASRT) and holds 8 patents in the field of transplantation tolerance and peripheral nerve research.