Board of Directors

Chairman:

Ruth M Warwick MB, ChB

UK

Ruth Warwick qualified in Medicine from Bristol University UK (1973) and specialized in clinical haematology (Royal Free, Hillingdon & Hammersmith Hospitals). She worked in Transfusion Medicine and as Consultant Specialist for Tissue Services for the National Health Service Blood & Transplant (NHSBT) from 1993 to 2010. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians MRCP 1977, FRCP 1997, & Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists MRCPath 1980,  FRCPath 1992.  She is a past President of the European Association of Tissue Banks (2007-2009) and a past President of British Association for Tissue Banking (2006-2008). She was Chairman of the EC CEN ISSS Workshop on Coding & Traceability of Tissues & Cells (2007-2008). She has had national & international experience in policy setting; the founder Chair of the  National Institute for Biological Standards & Controls /UK Blood Services Tissues Advisory Committee for Tissues and Haemopoietic Stem Cells (1995-2001), Consultant for the Council of Europe Expert Group on Organs Tissues & Cells (1999- 2001) and its editing group for the first Guide for the Quality and Safety of Tissues and Cells 2012 & advisory roles for the English Department of Health Transplant Policy Unit & Human Tissue Authority.  She has over 120 published papers, edited volumes including lead editor of two multinational books in Tissue and Cell Donation and Usage (published 2009 and 2012), chapters, and letters and over 110 abstracts. She has been a member of the Board of Directors since 2010. 

Vice-Chairman/Secretary:

Merlyn H. Sayers, MBBCH, PhD 

USA

Carter BloodCare’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Merlyn H. Sayers, is a physician with 25 years experience in blood banking and transfusion medicine. 

He was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, and received his medical degree and Ph.D. from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1978. 

He has held position of President and Chief Executive Officer at Carter BloodCare in Dallas/Fort Worth/Waco since its formation in 1998. 

Before coming to Texas, Dr. Sayers spent 15 years in Seattle with the Puget Sound Blood Center where he was also on the faculty at the University of Washington in the Department of Medicine. 

 He has previously held positions of Chairman of the Food and Drug Administration’s Blood Products Advisory Committee, Vice Chairman of the Washington State Board of Health, committee member on the Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability, and Vice Chairman of the AABB's Scientific Section Coordinating Committee. 

Dr. Sayers is also a Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and he is Past President of America’s Blood Centers.

Treasurer:  

Scott Brubaker, CTBS

 USA

Since August of 2004, Scott has held the position of Chief Policy Officer at the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) located in McLean, Virginia. His main duties are to liaison with the FDA, the CDC, and other professional organizations nationally and internationally who are standards-setting or regulating bodies for cell and tissue donation, banking, and transplantation.  He also serves as the office liaison for the AATB’s Standards Committee and Physicians’ Council, and leads the Association’s membership in the creation of new standards and guidance documents.  Prior to joining the AATB, he acquired 18 years of practical experience in tissue banking and organ donation at Virginia Tissue Bank/LifeNet.  Scott regularly provides educational presentations that cover tissue banking and transplant safety. 

Celso Bianco, MD

 USA

Dr. Bianco grew up in São Paulo, Brazil and received his medical degree from the Medical School of São Paulo. He was assistant professor of pathology at the New York University School of Medicine and at Rockefeller University in New York. He then joined the State University of New York in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he became Professor of Pathology. He joined the New York Blood Center as Director of Science and Technology in 1982 and in 1992 became the Vice President, Medical Affairs. In 2000 he became America’s Blood Centers Executive Vice President from where he retired in September 2012. He published many papers in immunology and on diseases transmissible by transfusion. He was a member of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability, the New York State Council on Blood and Transfusion Services and the Industry Representative of the U.S. FDA Blood Products Advisory Committee. He is a member of the AABB and its Transfusion Transmitted Diseases Committee, the American Society of Hematology and the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) Working Party on Transfusion Transmitted Infectious Diseases. He became president-elect of ISBT in July 2012 and will assume the presidency in June 2014.  

Richard E. Brown, MS, BS, BA, MT(ASCP)

 USA

Richard E. Brown has spent over 35 years in the clinical laboratory, blood banking, and executive administration positions.  He is a retired US Army Colonel who started his career operating and managing military hospital laboratories in small hospitals to Army Medical Centers including the largest US military medical center in Europe.  He specialized in blood banking and had an extensive career technically and administratively directing blood collection first in hospitals and medical centers and then for the entire US Army Medical Department.  He became the Army Blood Program Manager responsible for the collection and transfusion of blood and blood products Army wide.  He was the Alternate Responsible Head for the US Army FDA license, setting up the compliance structure in place 10 years later. He served as blood banking consultant to the US Army Surgeon General for nearly 6 years.  In his final military assignment he directed the individual training of all Army Medical Laboratory Technicians (MLT), Pharmacy Technicians and Radiology Technicians.  He was recruited by the American Red Cross to restructure their manufacturing operation in Atlanta, GA and then went on to their Los Angeles region.  He helped design, build, commission and place into operation the largest blood processing laboratory at that time in the American Red Cross system.  He served as Vice President for Global Laboratory Operations at StemCyte Inc., an umbilical cord blood stem cell bank.  

Jeremy Chapman, MD

 AUSTRAILIA

Professor Jeremy Chapman is a renal physician with a special interest in transplantation. He is Director of Renal Medicine at Westmead Hospital, Consultant to the NSW Australian Red Cross Blood Service Tissue Typing Laboratory and Chairman of the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry, the Australian Cord Blood Bank Network and Past President of the Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Australian Organ and Tissue Authority.

He is the Past-President of The Transplantation Society, Advisory Member of The World Health Organisation Expert Advisory Panel on Human Cell Tissue and Organ Transplantation, Secretary General and Past President of the World Marrow Donor Association and CoChair of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group. He received the Asturias Foundation 2010 Award for International Cooperation on behalf of The Transplantation Society. He was awarded the 2010 David Hume Award of the US National Kidney Foundation.

Professor Chapman's clinical work is in renal medicine, transplantation of kidney and pancreas and diabetic renal disease and islet transplantation.

Professor Chapman is actively involved in the academic field having over 320 publications. He is a Clinical Professor at the University of Sydney, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in the United Kingdom and Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.  

Dr. Che-Kit LIN

 HONG KONG, CHINA

After graduating from the University of Hong Kong with an M.B.,B.S. degree, Dr Che-Kit LIN was trained in laboratory haematology and has obtained Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists, Australasia, the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine (Pathology), the Hong Kong College of Pathologists and the Hong Kong College of Community Medicine, and Master in Business Administration in University of Birmingham, UK.

Dr LIN joined the Hong Kong Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service (HKRCBTS) in 1990 and has been its Chief Executive and Medical Director since 1995. In addition to the territory-wide blood programme, the HKRCBTS is also responsible for the unrelated haematopoietic stem cell programme in Hong Kong. He is also the honorary Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Anatomical and Cellular Pathology, Chinese University of Hong Kong. In addition to many local professional bodies and government committees, he is also actively involved in many international blood transfusion related bodies and is currently the Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Blood Network and the Asian-Pacific Zonal Coordinator, Global Advisory Panel on Corporate Governance and Risk Management for Blood Services in Red Cross Societies, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, council member of the Chinese Society of Blood Transfusion, honorary consultant of the Shanghai Blood Centre and member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel for Transfusion Medicine.

Dr LIN's interests within Transfusion Medicine are mainly voluntary non-remunerated blood donation, donor and blood safety.

Faten Moftah, MD

 EGYPT

Faten Moftah is currently the Director General for the National Blood Transfusion Services, Ministry of Health (MOH) in Egypt since 1999.  Not only is she the Director General, she also sits as the Chairperson on the Board of Directors.  She is the chair of the Egyptian Fellowship Board for Transfusion Medicine, the Chair of the National Advisory Committee for Blood Transfusion, and the Chair of the Scientific Committee of Blood Consumables in the National Pharmaceutical Regulator.  She is a member of ICCBBA’s Middle East and European Technical Advisory Group (MEETAG) and the International Society for Blood Transfusion (ISBT), where she served as the Regional Director from 2002 to 2006.  She currently is a consultant for The World Health Organization (WHO), an executive member of the Arabic Speaking countries Transfusion Medicine Courses (ATMC) and a member of the Arab Association of Transfusion Medicine.

D. Mike Strong, PhD

USA

Dr. Strong graduated from Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA and received his PhD from The Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He served 20 years in the Navy where he was involved in transplantation, tissue and blood banking He retired in 2007 as COO at the Puget Sound Blood Center where he founded the Northwest Tissue Center in 1988. He has served on Advisory Committees for FDA, NIH, IAEA and HemaQuebec and has lectured around the world. He is the recipient of the DeGowin Lectureship in Blood Banking from the University of Iowa, the Distinguished Lectureship Award from the South Texas Blood and Tissue Bank and five lifetime achievement awards including: from AATB, ABC, APASTB, AABB and UBS. He has served as a consultant for CDC, the IAEA, the WHO and Canadian Blood Services. He is Past President of AABB and past Chair of the AABB U.S. Biovigilance Network Steering Committee. He is currently coordinating the WHO Project NOTIFY.

Diana Teo, MD

SINGAPORE

Diana Teo graduated from National University of Singapore in 1982 with an M.B.,B.S. degree. Obtained Master of Science degree in Medical Immunology from the University of London, followed by Membership of the Royal College of Pathologists, UK in 1993, and Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists in 2001. Accredited by the UK General Medical Council Specialist  Register in the Speciality of Immunology, and Certificate of Specialist Accreditation, Ministry of Health, Singapore in the Speciality of Pathology. Awarded the Singapore National Day Honours Public Administration Medal  (Silver) in 2008.

 Appointed Director, Centre for Transfusion Medicine, Health Sciences Authority (HSA) since January 2003, and the Group Director, Blood Services Group, HSA since August 2008.  Chairman of the HSA Professional Board since January 2009. The Blood Services Group is the national blood service in Singapore, and is AABB accredited in blood banking and transfusion medicine and ASHI accredited in tissue typing. The Blood Services Group is also a WHO Collaborating Centre for Transfusion Medicine. Other relevant appointments include the Ministry of Health Specialist Training Committee for Haematology, President of the Singapore Society of Haematology from 2002 to 2004,  Member of the Board of Directors (Asia-Pacific Region Director) for International Society of Blood Transfusion, Vice Chair of the Asia Pacific Blood Network, Member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel for Transfusion Medicine, and Member of the Board of Directors for ICCBBA.  

Dr Teo's main interests within Transfusion Medicine include: organizational and quality systems in blood transfusion services, blood safety, and global development in transfusion medicine.