I hail from the great state of Mississippi! I spent my first 21 years of my life there and then I moved to St. Louis for medical school at Washington University SOM. After graduation in 1997, I began my pediatric residency, fellowship and advanced training at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. I am board certified in pediatric gastroenterology and transplant hepatology. In 2004, I joined the faculty of Children’s Memorial, now The Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and subsequently became the Medical Director of Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplantation Program. In 2019, I was named the Associate Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Lurie Children’s.

Dr. Avitzur is a Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto, and the Medical director of Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplantation at the Hospital for Sick Children. His research work is mainly within the fields of intestinal failure and congenital diarrhea focusing at patient outcome, genotype-phenotype correlations and treatment approaches within these domains. He currently leads the International Intestinal failure registry under the IRTA. Dr. Avitzur published more than 120 peer reviewed papers and book chapters focusing on intestinal failure and liver and intestine transplantation.

I am a pediatric gastroenterologist and Director of the Home Parenteral Nutrition Program and Nutrition Assessment Laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital. I oversee the nutritional research laboratories at BCH, which includes interpretation of indirect calorimetry, breath testing and other advanced nutritional assessments for patients at the hospital. In my position as Instructor of Pediatrics and a pediatric gastroenterologist, I am involved in clinical research endeavors which include serving as the PI on an active trial examining the safety and tolerability of IV fish oil lipid emulsion in a novel population of children undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation and the co-investigator on a trial exploring the validity of air displacement plethysmography in predicting body composition in patients with intestinal failure. I am the site PI a Phase 3 trial: A multicenter, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of apraglutide in adult subjects with short bowel syndrome and intestinal failure (SBS-IF). I am the lead investigator for a quality improvement project studying remote patient monitoring in at-risk patients in the home parenteral nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rob Venick is a Professor of Pediatrics and Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Venick serves as Medical Director of Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplantation Services at UCLA. He has received funding from the National Institute of Health and the American Society of Transplantation for his research in intestinal adaptation, intestinal failure associated liver disease, and liver and intestinal transplant-related pharmacogenomics. He chairs the Scientific Committee of the Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplant Association and serves on the Executive Committee of the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition’s Intestinal Rehabilitation Special Interest Group.