Vassilios Papalois is professor of transplantation surgery and consultant transplant and general surgeon at Hammersmith Hospital. He leads a Transplant Centre of Excellence focusing on high risk and extended criteria kidney and pancreas transplantation. Professor Papalois was trained in general and transplant surgery at St Mary's Hospital and in the department of surgery at the University of Minnesota (post-PhD fellowship and clinical fellowship) which is one of the biggest transplant programmes in the world and has led in the field of transplantation for the last 50 years. He has published 200 papers in peer review journals, 20 book chapters and 7 books. His research focuses on pre-transplant assessment and reconditioning of marginal kidney and pancreas grafts, use of stem cells, clinical ethics and health policy. He has been awarded, through competitive processes, more than £2,000,000 in research grants. Professor Papalois is clinical lead for medico-legal issues at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, chairs the Ethics Committee of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary and he is a member of the Research Ethics Committee of the UK Ministry of Defence. He is the Secretary General of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS), the President Elect of the European Society of Organ Transplantation (ESOT), a member of the Executive Board of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland (ASGBI) and a member of the European Society of Surgery (ESS). Professor Papalois organises a series of advanced international courses annually on transplant training, clinical ethics and health policy and has given more than 100 lectures in international forums as an invited speaker. He has been awarded a Bronze National Award for Clinical Excellence by the UK Department of Health, a Senior Clinical Investigator Award by the European Society for Organ Transplantation and a Teaching Excellence Award by Imperial College London. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Thessaloniki and he is an Honorary Member of the Spanish Association of Surgeons and the Spanish Transplantation Society.