Erik Finger, MD, PhD

Biography

Dr. Finger is the Eunice L. Dwan Endowed Chair for Diabetes Research and Professor of Surgery at the University of Minnesota, where his research focuses on organ and tissue preservation. In addition, he is a multi-organ abdominal transplant surgeon with a particular focus on kidney and pancreas transplantation. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Davis, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Ph.D. at Harvard University in Biomedical and Biological Sciences, a General Surgery residency at MGH, and postdoctoral and clinical research fellowships in transplant immunology and clinical transplantation at UCSF. He has been a faculty member at the University of Minnesota for 15 years, where he is actively involved in clinical transplantation, clinical tolerance trials, and basic studies in transplant immunology and organ preservation. He has multiple grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Recent achievements include the first long-term cryopreservation of organs, followed by successful transplantation.