Julie K. Heimbach (US)

Julie K. Heimbach, M.D., is a transplant surgeon and the Director of the Transplant Center in Rochester, Minnesota, with a primary focus in adult and pediatric liver transplantation and living-donor surgery.

Areas of clinical expertise include:

• Improving outcomes for liver transplant recipients with obesity-related liver disease
• Advancing techniques for living-donor hepatectomy and striving to ensure long-term donor safety following donor surgery
• Improving outcomes for liver transplant recipients with hilar cholangiocarcinoma treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by liver transplantation
• Coordination of our multidisciplinary approach to care of the patient with end-stage liver disease before and after their transplant

In addition to her clinical activities, Dr. Heimbach is active in research including analysis of outcomes for complex patients such as those with hilar cholangiocarcinoma and other malignancies, or obesity. She has been involved in research examining the long-term outcomes of living liver donors and living kidney donors and her work has been published in high-impact scientific journals. She has also been active in education, having previously served as the surgery clerkship director for Mayo Medical School (now Mayo Clinic School of Medicine). In addition to her work with medical students, Dr. Heimbach has mentored many transplant surgery fellows and research fellows.

Dr. Heimbach is also active in the development of national organ allocation policy and has served in multiple leadership roles. She has previously served on the Board of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) and as chair of the OPTN Liver-Intestine Committee, as well as serving two terms on the Membership and Professional Standards Committee of the OPTN. Additionally, she has been a member of the governing board of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD), and as a counselor on the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS). She is currently an associate editor of the Journal of Hepatology, and previously served as an AE for American Journal of Transplantation as well as for the journal Liver Transplantation.