Dr. Ascher is Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) as well as the Chief of Transplantation (liver, kidney and pancreas). She also serves as Director of Tertiary Care for the UCSF Medical Center.Dr. Ascher’s surgical career is devoted to clinical transplantation and transplantation research. Her research interests are in hepatocyte immunogenecity, mechanisms of allograft rejection and clinical transplantation.Dr. Ascher completed her undergraduate and medical education at the University of Michigan. She fulfilled a general surgery residency and clinical transplantation fellowship at the University of Minnesota. Following her postgraduate training in 1982, Dr. Ascher joined the faculty of the department of surgery at the University of Minnesota and was named the Clinical Director of the Liver Transplant Program. Her clinical responsibilities included liver and renal transplant, and general and vascular surgery. She joined the department of surgery at the University of California, San Francisco in 1988 to develop a liver transplantation program.Dr. Ascher served on the Presidential Task Force on Organ Transplantation and the Surgeon General’s Task Force on Increasing Donor Organs. She currently is the Chair of the Secretary of Health & Human Services Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation and also a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons with additional memberships in numerous other medical societies.
