Camillo Ricordi

His professional career has been developed in the educational and scientific field mainly. He has been Co-Director of the Executive Office of Research Leadership (2001-2003), as Senior Associate Dean of Research (2003-2006) and has chaired the Dean's Research Office (2006-) at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami.

He is also a Head of the Human Cell Processing Facility, funded by NIH, which has been providing human cell products for research and clinical applications at the University of Miami, Florida and throughout the world since 1993.

After graduating in medicine, he specialized in Gastrointestinal Surgery and Digestive Endoscopy at the University of Milan, graduating Cum Laude in 1988. During this same period he completed several complementary studies at the University of Washington School of Medicine (St Louis, Missouri), in the Department of Genetics, and conducting training in Immunogenetics and Immunobiology of cell transplants.

He was part of a team in 1986 at the Washington University in St. Louis that pioneered what is known as the islet transplant procedure, developed to address the worst cases of diabetes type 1. He is credited with developing the automated method for islet cell isolation called the "Ricordi Method.” The method includes the use of the Ricordi Chamber, for which Dr. Ricordi obtained the Nessim Habif World Prize for Surgery at the University of Geneva in 2001. The award is given to the invention of a machine that allows progress to be made significant in a field of surgery. Dr. Ricordi's invention of the automated islet isolation method made it possible to obtain a greater number of islets of a human pancreas; before they needed up to five or six organs to carry out a transplant.

Ricordi studied from 1971 to 1976 at the Scientific Lyceum in Milan and graduated Cum Laude in Medicine from the University of Milan in 1982. During his medical studies at the University of Milan he did internships at the Institute of Central Nervous System Physiology of the National Research Council (Milan, Italy) and later, as a student of internal medicine in the Internal Medicine Department of the San Raffaele Institute in Milan.

Camillo Ricordi, (born 1957) is a diabetes researcher based in Miami, FL. He currently serves as Director of the Diabetes Research Institute, a position he has held since 1996. He is the Chief Academic Officer of the Diabetes Research Institute of the University of Miami and is director of the DRI's Cell Transplant Center. He has been active in stem cell research and its applications to treating diabetes, particularly Type 1 Diabetes. He specializes in pancreatic islet transplantation