Aleah L Brubaker, MD, PhD

I am an MD PhD trained surgeon scientist who practices adult and pediatric liver and kidney transplant at UC San Diego Heath and Rady Children's Hospital where I serve as surgical director of liver transplantation and the co-director of organ perfusion and preservation. I completed my medical and doctoral training at Loyola University Chicago and went on to complete my surgical residency and transplant fellowship at Stanford University. I am one of the founding members and current chair of CONCORD, a national consortium focused on the impact of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) and ex situ machine perfusion (MP) on donation after circulatory death (DCD) abdominal allograft utilization and outcomes. My clinical and research interests are centered on the ability of in situ and ex situ machine perfusion to metabolically rehabilitate organs to expand the available donor pool and improve access to safe transplant for waitlisted recipients. To drive translational investigation in organ rehabilitation, I co-direct the Transplant Revitalization Lab. Personally, I am married to Jared Forrester, a minimally invasive hepatobiliary surgeon, and together we are raising our spirited daughter Gemma (4) and our dog, Diego.