As a result of our most recent Board of Directors election, ASTCT welcomes our newly elected board members. New board members begin their service to ASTCT after the 2025 Tandem Meetings of ASTCT® and CIBMTR®. The Treasurer and Director positions will serve a three year term from 2025 – 2028. The Vice President serves a four-year term that will rotate through the presidential line, with the 2026 – 2027 term as President.
Please join us in congratulating our new officers. We look forward to your leadership!
Incoming Board Members
Click on a name to jump to their biography and learn more about them.
Vice President - Richard Maziarz, MD
Oregon Health and Science University
To my ASTCT Colleagues:
With over 4 decades of experience in basic, translational, and clinical research, my career began with training and faculty appointment at DFCI and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. In 1991, I joined Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) where I had the opportunity to establish and direct the Adult BMT Program and later the Center for Hematologic Malignancies. Since then, I’ve contributed to all aspects of program expansion, from clinical services to business management. The challenge of providing transplant services across a large rural region, often for patients with limited financial resources in an inhospitable fiscal environment, led to the creation of OHSU's financial assistance model, catalyzed other health policy efforts, including consultation on OR Medicaid’s transplantation guidelines.
I have held leadership roles in several national organizations, including ASTCT (Chair, Value/Health Economics IG; JTCT Assoc Ed), ISCT (North American VP; Co-Chair Commercialization and Reimbursement Committees) BMT CTN Steering Committee (Member; Chair, RRT Committee; GvHD Committee; Leader, Affiliate Center Task Force) and NMDP (Chair, Financial Group Advisory Board). Currently, I serve on U.S. DHHS HRSA Advisory Council on Blood Stem Cell Transplantation, chairing the Drug Shortages Subcommittee, and have started global health initiatives with Thailand’s TCT programs.
My research has focused on transplantation immunology, particularly reducing GVHD-related complications, and I’ve been privileged to mentor numerous trainees and faculty. My recent scientific and policy work has shifted toward IEC therapies, such as CART, TIL, and NK cell research, including chairing the Scientific Steering Committee for the industry-sponsored “JULIET” trial, which led to FDA approval of tisagenlecleucel for advanced DLBCL.
As a member of ASTCT for nearly 30 years, going forth, I would focus on three key priorities given the current national landscape: sustaining NIH funding and raising visibility for our science, ensuring equitable access to safe and cost-effective TCT, and maintaining ASTCT’s leadership in the rapidly advancing IEC field, focusing on workforce expansion needs.
Director of Laboratory Science - Ami Bhatt, MD, PhD
Stanford University
As a proud member of ASTCT since 2011, when I was fortunate to receive the New Investigator Award, this community has been instrumental in shaping my career as a physician-scientist. Over the past 15 years, I have dedicated my work to dissecting the role of the microbiome in HCT, an area of deep passion. Through my research at Stanford University, I have developed and applied novel molecular and computational tools to understand the dynamic changes in microbial genomes and their functional impact on human health. This work has been supported by continuous NIH funding, published in prestigious journals (Cell, Nature, NEJM, JTCT, Blood), and recognized with accolades, including the 2024 American Society of Hematology William Dameshek Prize and my election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation.
As I look to the future, my goals are to use my network, experiences and hard work to bring more researchers in the data science, functional genomics and artificial intelligence realms into the exciting field of transplantation, and to build and support the next generation of HCT-focused translational scientists. As a co-chair of the BMT CTN 1801 trial, I have had the privilege of collaborating with many of you to advance translational science. This experience has taught me that by fostering stronger cross-institutional collaboration, we can accelerate the pace of discovery and improve outcomes for our patients.
It would be an honor to serve as your Director of Laboratory Science, leveraging my experience as a mentor to over 60 trainees and my deep commitment to our community. Together, we can work to ensure that the fundamental discoveries taking place in our labs are rapidly translated into tangible advancements in transplantation and cellular therapy. I am excited by the prospect of contributing to the society's mission and hope you will consider supporting my candidacy.
Director of Community/Clinical Practice - Olalekan Oluwole, MD, MPH
Vanderbilt University
I specialize in the treatment of hematological malignancies using stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy. I am the founder and leader of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) cellular therapy research program, and I designed the nascent Vanderbilt initiative to expand cell therapy as an institution-wide resource for malignant and non-malignant disorders.
My primary field of research is in improving the safety profile of cellular therapy through investigator-initiated intervention trials, multi-institution sponsored therapeutic research and national consortium outcomes research. I led sponsored research showing the benefit of prophylactic corticosteroids during chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell treatment and I led a coalition of experts to publish a reference guide for outpatient CAR-T therapy. I am deeply invested in community engagement efforts to safely transition CAR-T to the outpatient setting. I am very active in ASTCT and a member of many committees including of the American Society for Transplant and Cell Therapy (ASTCT) Committee on Cellular Therapy and Committee on Practice Guidelines.
In this new role of Director of Community/Clinical Practice, I will use my clinical, communication and program development skills to engage the community of cell therapy physicians, transplant physicians and scientists to formulate practice guidelines and other relevant educational publications and outreaches to improve the safety profile of CAR-Ts including outpatient therapy. Secondly, I will facilitate the expansion of the knowledge base of CAR-T to other IEC products both autologous and allogeneic and ensure that the knowledge is disseminated to academic and community-based practices. Thirdly, I will use the position to work closely with the ASTCT executive committee to network with other relevant organizations to facilitate the expansion of the knowledge and safety management of CAR-T cell therapy to non-malignant conditions including sickle cell disease and autoimmune disorders.
Director at Large - Filippo Milano, MD, PhD
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
It is an honor to be considered for the Director at Large position with the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT). My career has been dedicated to advancing allogeneic transplantation and cellular therapies to improve patient outcomes. As Director of the Cord Blood Transplantation (CBT) Program at Fred Hutch, I am committed to offering innovative therapies to patients without conventional donors, drawing on extensive experience in clinical trial design and fostering national and international collaborations.
At the Hutch, I serve as the Scientific Director of the Cellular Therapy Laboratory where I lead efforts to expand access to a full range of cellular therapies, including immunotherapy and gene therapy. As a dedicated member of the ASTCT, I have actively contributed to our Society's initiatives by chairing the BMT CTN Publications Committee, the Special Interest Group for CBT, and the Graft Sources & Manipulation Committee. In addition, I serve on the federal advisory council on stem cell transplantation where I advocate for the advancement of equitable access for all patients.
Among my colleagues, I am known to be passionate about promoting innovation in research and putting the patient first. Outside work I find joy in cooking and coaching football (the real one). The latter gave me a chance of working with the University of Washington where I mentor athletes interested in healthcare. My passion and collaborative nature will allow me to effectively represent the interests of the ASTCT. My goal is to support the Society's long-term vision and our shared mission to enhance patient outcomes and advance the practice of transplantation and cellular therapies.