Manuel Rodriguez-Davalos, MD, joins the University of Utah as the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program Director for the Division of Transplantation & Advanced Hepatobiliary Surgery. Dr. Rodriguez is also Section Chief of Abdominal Transplant and Director of Pediatric Liver Transplantation at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital.

A graduate of Universidad Anahuac in Mexico, his career in liver disease began in 1996 as a post-doctoral fellow at national institute of medical sciences in Mexico City. After 15 years working in adult and pediatric transplantation in the northeast coast of the United States, he left his position as Director of Pediatric Abdominal Transplantation at Yale, where he was an Associate Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics and moved to Utah to take the position of Surgical Director of Pediatric Liver Transplant.

His focus is liver disease with interest in living donor liver transplantation, as well as hepatic malignancies and portal hypertension. Dr. Rodriguez has worked with UNOS pediatric and liver-intestine committees as regional representative and member at large. Currently, he works with the national pediatric allocation task force, the registry committee, and the council of Society of Pediatric Liver Transplantation (SPLiT) and IPTA. He is an associate editor of the journal Transplantation. He is an active member of the North American Living Liver Donor Innovations group, ILTS Pediatrics committee past chair and TTS Education committee.

His current research is focused on the use of technology including advanced quantitative modeling techniques with 3D imaging and 3D printing. He investigates the use of split grafts and other extended criteria to decrease the mortality on patients on the liver transplantation waiting list. With the team at Primary Children’s Hospital, and the investigators from the U of Utah Department of Surgery and Pediatrics, he is conducting work on pediatric hepatic malignancies, innovative vascular techniques for children with portal hypertension, as well as collaborating with the NIH funded-Childhood Liver Disease Research and Education Network. He is also in charge of the transplantation intiative with the Center for Global Surgery with current funded projects in Asia and Latin America, which include the TTS/ILTS Paired center project.