Michael Cecka, PhD
- Professor Emeritus, UCLA
- Former Director, UCLA Immunogenetics Center
Dr. Michael Cecka is the Professor Emeritus at the UCLA Immunogenetics Center, Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles. He is certified by the American Board for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics and an HLA Laboratory Director and holds licenses in California, Hawaii and New York.
Dr. Cecka received his PhD in Microbiology at UCLA and explored antigen presentation in the context of the structure and function of major histocompatibility molecules during postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology, University College London and the University of Basel. He joined the UCLA Tissue Typing Laboratory under Dr. Paul Terasaki in 1982.
He was involved in developing the United Network for Organ Sharing’s National Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients and managed the UNOS Kidney Transplant Registry from 1989 to 2000. He served on the Scientific Advisory Committee for UNOS from 1987 to 2000 and several other UNOS committees since. He was among the architects of the change in assessment of sensitization for transplant candidates to a calculated PRA and the current US national kidney allocation system.
Dr. Cecka has authored more than 140 scientific articles, reviews and invited editorials and more than 100 book chapters. He published 19 editions of the book, Clinical Transplants, which summarized the development of transplantation worldwide.
