Professor of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine Allan Douglas Kirk has been awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the School of Medicine of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
The award ceremony was held on Friday, 16 October 2026, in the University’s Great Hall.
Proceedings opened with welcoming remarks by Professor Gerasimos Siasos, Rector of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Next, Evangelos Felekouras, Professor of Surgery and Director of the First Department of Surgery at the School of Medicine, spoke about Professor Kirk’s work and personal qualities.
The formal conferment then took place with Professor Konstantinos Tsioufis, Vice-Chair of the School of Medicine, reading the official citation.
Following this, Professor Pagona Lagiou, Dean of the School of Health Sciences, invested the honouree with the School’s academic gown.
The ceremony closed with the awardee, Professor Allan Douglas Kirk, giving a talk on ‘Tolerance: Lessons From Organ Transplantation’.
In his welcome address, the Rector, Professor Gerasimos Siasos, said, among other things,
‘Throughout his career, Professor Kirk has combined clinical practice with pioneering research while holding senior academic and leadership positions.
He served as Chief of the Transplantation Branch at the US National Institutes of Health and as Professor of Surgery at Emory University School of Medicine. In 2014, he became Chair of the Department of Surgery at Duke University, a position he held until 2025.
His research addresses one of the central challenges in transplantation: achieving immune tolerance, whereby a transplanted organ is accepted without unduly suppressing the body’s protective immune responses.
His work on the mechanisms governing immune responses and the development of targeted treatments to prevent organ rejection has advanced our understanding of transplant immunology and helped improve prospects for transplant patients.’
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