He received his undergraduate and medical school education at the University of Illinois as a recipient of an Illinois State Scholarship. He trained in internal medicine at the University of Illinois Hospital and Boston’s then Beth Israel Hospital and in nephrology and transplant immunology at the Peter Bent Brigham (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital) under the tutelage of John Merrill and Bernie Carpenter. Upon completion of his training, he was appointed medical director of the hospital’s transplant program. Beginning with a NIH Career Development Award granted two years after the completion of his fellowship, he has been continuously funded by the NIH for over 30 years.
He moved to Beth Israel Hospital, another Harvard teaching hospital, as medical director of their transplant program. At present, he is Professor of Medicine and Surgery at Harvard and Director of The Transplant Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He has delivered the Lilly Lecture of the Royal College of Physicians and been awarded life-time achievement awards by the American Society of Transplantation, the American Society of Nephrology and the International Society of Nephrology. He is founding president of the American Society of Transplantation, past president of the Clinical Immunology Society, and he has served as council member of several honorific societies.