Leonardo V. Riella, MD, PhD is the Harold and Ellen Danser Endowed Chair in Transplant Surgery and Associate Professor of Surgery and Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He serves as Medical Director of Kidney Transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he leads clinical and research efforts to advance the field of transplantation. Dr. Riella’s work focuses on immune regulation, transplant tolerance, and the development of innovative therapies to improve long term transplant outcomes. He founded and leads the TANGO Consortium, the largest international collaborative network dedicated to studying recurrence of glomerular diseases after kidney transplantation. In March 2024, Dr. Riella led the world’s first successful transplantation of a gene edited pig kidney into a living human, a landmark achievement that has accelerated the clinical translation of xenotransplantation. His work combines clinical innovation with advanced immune profiling approaches to better understand and modulate the immune response in transplantation.