Conference Speakers
Seth Karp MD
Professor and Chair, Department of Surgery, Vanderbilt University
Seth J. Karp, M.D., is the Surgeon-in-Chief at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Concurrently, Dr. Karp serves as Chair of the Section of Surgical Sciences and Professor of Surgery, Biomedical Ethics and Society, and Anesthesiology at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. For ten years, Dr. Karp served as Director of the Vanderbilt Transplant Center (2011-15 and 2017-23). He attained his A.B. in physics and astrophysics and his A.M. in astrophysics at Harvard and an M.D. in the joint Harvard/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology Program in Health Sciences and Technology. He completed his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and transplant fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Dr. Karp is an active transplant surgeon specializing in liver transplantation. Throughout his career, Dr. Karp has been active in the transplant community. He served in numerous national leadership positions in the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN)/United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Dr. Karp served on the UNOS Board of Directors. He chaired the American Transplant Congress, is deputy editor of the American Journal of Transplantation, and has testified in front of the United Stated Congress on transplantation. He is a fellow of the American Surgical Association, the Southern Surgical Association, and the American College of Surgeons.
Dr. Karp’s clinical research interests include increasing the number of organs available for transplantation, organ procurement organization reform, optimizing the use of all organs, and understanding and improving disparities in access to care for rural and underserved populations. Dr. Karp’s basic science contributions include research into the mechanisms of liver regeneration. Dr. Karp has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals related to organ transplantation and donation. He has given presentations across the world on clinical and research issues in transplantation.
