Dr. Maria Siemionow Awarded Medawar Prize
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Maria Siemionow, MD, PhD, DSc, has been selected by The Transplantation Society as recipient of its 2026 Medawar Prize. The Medawar Prize, named after Transplantation Society co-founder and Nobel Prize laureate Sir Peter Medawar, is the world’s highest dedicated award for outstanding contributions in the field of transplantation. Awarded every two years, the 2026 Medawar Prize and medal presentation will take place during the 31st International Congress of The Transplantation Society, to be held in Sydney, Australia from September 20–23, 2026.
Dr. Siemionow is an internationally recognized surgeon-scientist specializing in microsurgery, reconstructive transplantation, peripheral nerve surgery, and regenerative medicine. In 2004, she secured the world’s first Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for Cleveland Clinic’s facial transplantation protocol. In December 2008, led the multidisciplinary team of surgeons that performed the first near-total face transplant in the United States at the Cleveland Clinic. In 2014, she joined the University of Illinois College of Medicine as Professor of Orthopaedics and Director of Microsurgery Research. Her research is aimed at reducing allograft rejection and the need for lifelong immunosuppressive drugs in transplant patients and developing new techniques to enhance nerve regeneration. She developed donor-recipient chimeric cell technologies designed to modulate immune responses and promote transplant tolerance.
Dr. Siemionow received her medical degree from the Poznan Medical Academy in 1974 and subsequently completed orthopedic residency training and earned a PhD in 1985 for her work on microsurgical vessel anastomosis. She further completed a hand surgery fellowship at the Christine Kleinert Institute for Hand and Microsurgery in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1992, she obtained a Doctor of Science (DSc) degree for research on microcirculation in free muscle flaps. Before joining UIC, from 1995 to 2013, she served as Director of Plastic Surgery Research and Head of Microsurgical Training in the Department of Plastic Surgery at Cleveland Clinic.
A leader in professional organizations, Dr. Siemionow is a past president of the American Society for Reconstructive Transplantation, the International Hand and Composite Tissue Allotransplantation Society, and the American Society for Peripheral Nerve. Her work has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the Folkert Belzer Award, the Cleveland Clinic Research Excellence Award, and multiple national and international honors. She has received the Polish Order of Merit and the Commander’s Cross of Polonia Restituta, as well as major U.S. distinctions such as the American Association of Plastic Surgeons Clinical Researcher of the Year and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons Special Achievement Award. Additional honors include the Carnegie Foundation Great Immigrants Award and multiple honorary doctorates.
In 2017, Dr. Siemionow founded Dystrogen Therapeutics where she serves as Chief Medical Officer and leads the development of Dystrophin-Expressing Chimeric (DEC) cell therapy for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, including first-in-human clinical studies. She holds multiple internationally recognized patents in neural regeneration and chimeric cell technologies and continues advancing next-generation multi-chimeric therapies. For her innovative work, she received the 2025 Inventor of the Year Award from the University of Illinois Chicago.
She has authored over 340 peer-reviewed publications, edited four textbooks and two popular science books, and contributed more than 100 book chapters. She serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals and is an active reviewer in her field.