Division of Transplant Surgery

Steven I. Hanish, M.D., is a Professor in the Department of Surgery at MUSC, as well as the Division Chief of Transplant Surgery. He specializes in complex surgeries of the liver and bile duct as well as Living Donor Liver Transplant. His clinical focus is on expanding the availability of liver transplant - from both living and deceased donors - to patients who weren't previously eligible for transplant due to their age, obesity, tumor size, or insufficient sobriety time.

Dr. Hanish earned his medical degree at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He completed a residency in general surgery at Duke University School of Medicine and received advanced training in transplant surgery through a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics. He performed additional training at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea, learning the techniques of performing living-donor liver transplantation.

Prabhakar Baliga, M.D. is the R. Randolph Bradham, M.D., Endowed Chair in Surgery and Chair of the MUSC Department of Surgery. He leads a broad range of programs and services spanning ten clinical divisions and the Department’s research and education divisions. Dr. Baliga’s primary focus is on building a premier Department of Surgery that best meets the needs of South Carolinians and the students and surgical residents that come to MUSC to train. Prior to assuming the role as department Chair, he was Chief in the Division of Transplant Surgery and MUSC’s ICCE Leader for Transplant, Nephrology & Hepatology.

Dr. Baliga obtained his medical degree from Madras Medical College, completed his internship and surgical residency at Tulane University Hospital Systems in New Orleans, and then fulfilled a two-year Transplant Surgery Fellowship at the University of Michigan.

Ahmad Saleh Alqassieh, M.D. is a distinguished medical professional with a rich general and transplant surgery background. Dr. Alqassieh earned his Medical Doctorate from Hashemite University, setting the foundation for his medical career. His commitment to excellence led him to pursue extensive postgraduate training, including a Fellowship in Abdominal Organ Transplant Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina. Prior to that, he completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in General Surgery at King Hussein Cancer Center and a Residency in General Surgery at Jordan University Hospital. Dr. Alqassieh's medical journey began with an Internship at Prince Faysal, further refining his skills and knowledge.

Tara Barry, M.D., is double-board certified in general surgery and surgical critical care who specializes in liver, kidney, and pancreas transplantation. She is also certified in robotic surgery and performs living donor nephrectomies as well as robotic general surgery procedures. She has dedicated her career to caring for patients with advanced organ disease and is passionate about helping people live longer, healthier lives through transplantation.

Dr. Barry earned her medical degree from the University of Maryland and completed her general surgery residency at the University of South Florida, where she also spent two years in clinical research that led to several publications. During residency, she also completed a fellowship in surgical critical care and became certified in robotic surgery. She went on to advanced training in abdominal transplant surgery at Tampa General Hospital, one of the busiest transplant centers in the nation..

Diego di Sabato, M.D., serves as the Surgical Director of Liver Transplantation for both adult and pediatric patients at MUSC, a position that allows him to make a significant impact on patient care. He is developing a robust Living Donor Liver Transplant (LDLT) program and works with multidisciplinary teams including MUSC Health's Transplant Oncology practice, the Pediatric Liver Transplant Program, and other LDLT indications.

Dr. di Sabato joined MUSC from the University of Chicago School of Medicine, where, since 2019, he served as the co-director of the Living Donor Liver Transplant (LDLT) Program. Dr. di Sabato is exceedingly well trained, having completed two fellowships in Transplantation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He was also a visiting surgeon at the world's busiest living donor liver transplant program, Asan Medical Center, in Seoul, South Korea, the first center in the world to perform living donor liver transplantation.

Ammar Mahmood, M.D., is a highly accomplished surgical professional renowned for his unwavering commitment to patient care, continuous learning, and the advancement of health care. Born and raised in Iraq, he earned his medical degree from Al-Mustansiriyah University College of Medicine. Subsequently, he pursued his general surgery residency at Jordan University of Science and Technology, achieving board certification. Dr. Mahmood furthered his expertise by becoming a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and a European Board of Surgery Fellow. He then honed his Burn & Reconstructive Surgery skills during a fellowship at the University of Tennessee Department of Plastic Surgery, gaining expertise in acute, critical, and chronic burn treatments.

Committed to expanding his surgical horizons, Dr. Mahmood completed an Abdominal Organ Transplant Surgery Fellowship at MUSC, earning certifications for Liver, Kidney, and Pancreas transplants. As an active member of esteemed medical and surgical societies, Dr. Mahmood emphasizes professional growth and collaboration.

John W. McGillicuddy, M.D. FACS, is a solid organ transplant surgeon. He received his undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, graduating cum laude and inducted into Phi Beta Kappa for outstanding academic achievement. Dr. McGillicuddy completed medical school at the University of Michigan where he was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha for outstanding academic achievement.

He completed his general surgery residency and Extra-coporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) fellowship and critical care fellowships at the University of Michigan before completing an abdominal transplant surgery fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. McGillicuddy specializes in the management of end-stage liver and end-stage renal disease, including the evaluation and selection of patients for liver or kidney transplantation.

Dr. Santosh Nagaraju, MD, is a board-certified surgeon specializing in abdominal organ transplant surgeon. Dr. Nagaraju earned his medical degree in India and completed a general surgery residency at Grant Medical College, Mumbai, in India. He pursued organ transplant training as a visiting research scholar at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute in Pittsburgh. He then completed a general surgery residency and a multi-organ transplant surgery fellowship at Indiana University.

Dr. Kannan Samy is an abdominal transplant surgeon and Assistant Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, where he serves as the Director of Organ Recovery, Perfusion, and Preservation. He completed his general surgery residency at Indiana University, a post-doctoral research fellowship at Emory and Duke focused on translational transplant immunology, and transplant surgery fellowship at Duke. His professional focus centers on advancing organ preservation and perfusion technology, including the clinical implementation of machine perfusion devices and normothermic regional perfusion for DCD organ recovery.

Dr. Samy was recently the recipient of the MUSC Harvey and Marcia Schiller Surgical Innovation Award to support OPO and transplant centers with AI-driven data management and decision making tools.

Joseph Scalea, M.D., is a board-certified surgeon specializing in kidney, pancreas, liver, and islet cell transplantation. At MUSC Health, he is the Executive Medical Director of Health Solutions and Medical Director of Transplant Surgical Quality. He also serves the Department of Surgery as the Vice Chair of Surgery for Entrepreneurship.

Dr. Scalea's research interests focus on improving outcomes and access to care for patients needing life-saving transplantation and researching strategies to achieve immune tolerance in allogeneic solid organ transplantation. He received international notoriety in 2019 for pioneering drones for organ transplants. As the inaugural Vice Chair of Surgery for Innovation, Dr. Scalea will expand his experience in clinical medicine, academic leadership, commercialization, and innovation to help translate innovative ideas from the laboratory to industry.

He received his medical degree and surgical training from the University of Maryland and completed his transplant fellowship at the University of Wisconsin and his post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard Medical School, Transplantation Biology Research Center.

David Taber, Pharm.D., MS, is a professor of surgery and director of the Surgical Outcomes Research Innovation Nucleus in the Department of Surgery, fostering the development, testing, and implementation of innovative devices, therapeutics, and health services interventions to improve outcomes for surgical patients. He oversees both industry-sponsored trials and investigator-initiated studies (IITs), supporting investigators in translating ideas from the lab and clinic into meaningful clinical research.

Dr. Taber earned his BS in Pharmacy, cum laude, from the State University of New York at Buffalo and completed a post-baccalaureate Pharm.D. at MUSC, graduating second in his class. He then completed a postdoctoral transplant pharmacy residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. With approximately 15 years of post-residency experience, he has a strong record in optimizing medication management for transplant patients and collaborating on impactful clinical research initiatives.

Dirk van der Windt, M.D., Ph.D., is a fellowship trained multi-organ transplant surgeon. Dr. van der Windt's clinical interests are in liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation, living kidney donation surgery, and dialysis access surgery. He received his MSc from the Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences in Rotterdam, and his MD and PhD in Transplant Immunology from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Following his Residency in General Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, and fellowship training in Abdominal Transplant and Hepatobiliary surgery at the University of Michigan, Dr. van der Windt joined the MUSC faculty in 2022.

As a practicing transplantation surgeon with a background in immunology, Dr. van der Windt’s research is focused developing innovative treatment strategies to intervene in the sequence of cell death, inflammation, antigen presentation, rejection, chronic allograft fibrosis and dysfunction in liver transplantation, and thereby prolong graft and patient survival. Research in his laboratory is particularly focused on the the ex-vivo treatment of the liver during normothermic machine perfusion (NMP), to optimize a liver graft for transplantation. NMP is a novel method for organ preservation and for viability assessment prior to transplantation, however, the use of NMP as a platform to actively treat the liver is still greatly underutilized.

Yuan Zhai, M.D., Ph.D., is a transplant immunobiologist. His research interest includes costimulatory pathways in alloreactive T cell activation, regulatory T cells in transplant tolerance, and liver ischemia reperfusion injury (IRI). The Lee Patterson Allen Transplant Immunobiology Laboratory (TIBL), under the direction of Yuan Zhai, M.D., Ph.D., provides a collaborative platform for experimental and translational research in organ transplantation.