With more than 4,000 kidney and/or pancreas transplants since its inception, The Organ Transplantation Center at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston is one of the busiest in the country. Under the fellowship program, surgeons are trained in the fields of kidney and pancreas transplantation, with opportunities to participate in both inpatient and outpatient care, as well as clinical and basic science research. Clinical Fellows and Visiting Assistant Professors are selected by UT faculty, based on their applications and an onsite interview. They participate in the supervision and teaching of residents and medical students over a 1- to 3-year period.

Resources:

Health Science Center Video

Graduate Medical Education

Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates ( ECFMG)

UT Counseling and WorkLife Services

Current Fellows:

Zsolt Kaposztas, MD joined the Division as a Visiting Assistant Professor on January 19, 2007. After graduating from The University of Pecs School of Medicine in 2000, he remained at the institution to complete his surgical residency and work in the Department of Surgery under the direction of Professor Ors Peter Horvath. During his general surgical training, Dr. Kaposztas researched gastric cancer. He was also an active member of the transplant team, training in pancreas and kidney transplantation. Dr. Kaposztas went on to a vascular surgical fellowship in 2006. His special interests are kidney and pancreas transplantation and vascular surgery.

Jose Benito A. Abraham, M.D.Dr. Abraham completed his medical degree at the University of the East and completed his residency training in Urology at The National Kidney and Transplant Institute in Manila, Philippines. He went on to a one-year Fellowship Training in Endourology and Laparoscopy at the Department of Urology of the University of California, Irvine under Dr. Ralph V. Clayman. During his fellowship, he also worked closely with Dr. Elspeth M. McDougall and served as Instructor in the Mini-Residency training program at the Astellas Center for Urological Education, one of the two largest robotic training centers in the United States. Dr. Abraham’s main interest as a clinical fellow in the division includes laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy; minimally invasive approaches to the urologic problems of kidney transplant patients, as well as renal and pancreas transplantation. Dr. Abraham joined the Division as a clinical fellow in September, 2007.

Karoly Varga, M.D. Dr. Varga earned his medical degree at the Semmelweis School of Medicine in Budapest, Hungary. After graduation, he completed his residency training in general surgery under the supervision of Drs. Lajos Flautner and Peter Kupcsulik at the First Department of Surgery. Dr. Varga then rose to the rank of Assistant Professor of Surgery within this department, where his main interests included pancreatic and colorectal surgery and surgical correction of portal hypertension. He was subsequently granted two scholarships to the Radiumhospitalet in Oslo, Norway, where he focused on micrometastases of esophageal malignomas under the leadership of Dr. Karl Erick Giercksky. In 2000, he joined the Gregory Fleming James Cystic Fibrosis Research Center and the Department of Cell Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, first as a Postdoctoral Fellow and then as a Research Associate Professor.   Under the mentorship of Drs. Eric Sorscher and Jim Collawn, Dr. Varga conducted basic science research involving correction of biogenesis, trafficking, and surface stability problems related to the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein.  Dr. Varga joined the Division in November 2007.

Alejandra Cicero, M.D. Dr. Cicero joined the Divison in March of 2008.