Congratulations to Dr. Chirag Desai on his promotion to Professor of Surgery in the Division of Abdominal Transplant.
Dr. Desai has been an active member of surgical teams as faculty at various institutions. Upon finishing his fellowship, he served as an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Arizona, where he was actively involved in starting a new intestinal transplant program. He returned to Georgetown University Hospital and its Transplant Institute, where he was the founding director of an autologous islet cell transplant program and was promoted to Associate Professor of Surgery. He received a research grant from National Pancreatic Foundation in 2015, for studying islet engraftment in different liver models. He moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016 as Surgical Director of liver transplantation, initiating a new Chronic Pancreatitis and autologous islet cell transplant program, which he currently directs. The program emphasis is on recurrent and chronic pancreatitis as well as islet cell autotransplantation, along with other complex chronic benign pancreatic disorders. This is the only such program in the whole state of North Carolina. In 2019, he was promoted to full Professor of Surgery. Dr. Desai has been actively involved in research as well. He has published several manuscripts in the field, most notably a novel technique of surgery for total pancreatectomy for islet auto transplant (Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2011), an invited commentary in JAMA Surgery (2016), and his work on the liver as a host for the islet cells (Islets 2017) based on a grant received from the National Pancreatic Foundation in 2015. He is also extensively published in the field of liver and intestinal transplantation in international journals such as the American Journal of Transplantation, Transplantation, and Pediatric Transplantation.