Alan Zambeli-Ljepović, MD, MHS, is a resident in his final year of general surgery training before going on to a fellowship in abdominal transplant surgery at the University of Colorado in Denver.
Originally from Croatia, he earned a BS in biomedical engineering from Columbia University and an MD and MHS (Master's of Health Sciences) from Duke University. At Columbia, he established the first biomedical engineering collaboration between Makerere (Kampala, Uganda) and Columbia Universities, resulting in a joint grant for sustainable medical device development for Ugandan hospitals.
A fellow of the National Clinician Scholars Program and the UCSF Center for Health Equity in Surgery and Anesthesia, his interest in global health has taken him to Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda. In each country, he has partnered with transplant physicians and surgeons to build a multinational group of doctors and health economists that is generating the evidence to guide safe and ethical expansion of kidney transplantation in low- and middle-income countries.
Outside of the hospital, Alan is one of the founding members of the Buck Fellows Program, through which he mentors local high school students applying to college. A competitive swimmer of 15 years, he lives by the principle that physical and mental health go hand-in-hand. He speaks Croatian/Serbian and Spanish.