Dr. Ratner is Professor of Surgery (with tenure) and Director of Renal and Pancreatic Transplantation at Columbia University. Notably, Dr. Ratner oversaw the tremendous growth of the Columbia Renal Transplant Program, introduced robotic kidney transplants, and established the Pancreas Transplant Program. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia, Dr. Ratner was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and served as the Chief of Solid Organ Transplantation at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
Dr. Ratner has helped train numerous students, surgical residents, nephrology fellows and over 50 transplant surgical fellows, many of whom have gone on to make significant contributions to transplantation, and now serve as leaders within the discipline. In 2023 he received the American Society of Transplant Surgeons prestigious Francis Moore Excellence in Mentorship Award.
Access to organ transplantation has been Dr. Ratner’s major academic interest. Dr. Ratner has been a leading innovator in transplantation for three decades. In 1993, he performed the world’s first dual renal transplant. In 1995 (with Dr. Louis Kavoussi) he performed the first laparoscopic donor nephrectomy, and set the stage for its widespread adoption, which resulted in a profound increase in living donor kidney transplantation. Dr. Ratner has made significant contributions in overcoming immunologic incompatibilities that prohibited transplantation. He devised the plasmapheresis/IVIg protocol for alloantibody desensitization in 1998. In 2001, Dr. Ratner orchestrated the second paired-kidney exchange in the U.S. Subsequently, he arranged the first paired kidney exchanges in both Pennsylvania and New York. Dr. Ratner has been a leading proponent of including compatible donor/recipient pairs in kidney exchanges. And his more contemporary work has looked at the organizational and regulatory barriers to access to care. All these strategies have increased organ availability and access to transplantation. Additionally, he has made important contributions to improve living donor safety. For his work, Dr. Ratner has received numerous awards and honors. And, he has been invited to speak and operate at venues around the world.
Dr. Ratner has authored or co-authored over 240 peer-reviewed publications and has been a federally funded investigator. His publications have been cited over 20,000 times. He served on the Boards of Directors of three different organ procurement organizations and was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of LiveOnNY (formerly the New York Organ Donor Network). He has served on numerous national committees including the Board of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Dr. Ratner recently won a competitive national election and will become the President-Elect of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) in July 2024. He sat on that organization’s Board of Directors, its Executive Committee and is presently on the Finance Committee. He is a Past-President of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, and previously served as that Society’s Treasurer.
Dr. Ratner originally hails from Brooklyn, NY. He received his undergraduate education at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his M.D. from Hahnemann University (now Drexel University College of Medicine). His general surgery training was obtained at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He completed a Fellowship in Transplantation Surgery and Immunology at Washington University. In 2011 Dr. Ratner completed a Master of Public Health with a focus on health care policy, administration, and management.