Dr. Rahul M. Jindal, Transplant Surgeon, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center; Professor of Surgery and Global Health, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and George Washington University, Silver Spring, MD

Dr. Rahul M. Jindal is a Transplant Surgeon at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. He is also a Professor of Surgery and Global Health at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD and George Washington University in Washington, DC. He obtained his medical degree from B.J. Medical College in Ahmedabad, India. He then earned a Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in Scotland and received a Transplant Fellowship from the University of Oxford in England. Dr. Jindal also earned a PhD in social psychology from Middlesex University in London and an MBA from Colorado Technical University in Colorado Springs, CO.

In the late 1990s, Dr. Jindal performed the world's first operation to link a tube with blood vessels in the damaged liver of a critically ill six-year-old boy. Dr. Jindal also set up the first comprehensive kidney dialysis and kidney transplant program in Guyana, South America, and successfully performed the first living kidney transplant in that country. His team has given hope and raised medical standards with their continued work in Guyana. In the United States, Dr. Jindal also played a crucial role in a groundbreaking surgery in 2009, performing the first ever pancreas islet cell transplant for traumatic pancreas in a wounded soldier.

Based on his experience in working with psycho-social issues among kidney patients, Dr. Jindal co-authored a book entitled “The Struggle for Life: A Psychological Perspective of Kidney Disease and Transplantation,” which is now used as a standard textbook in programs around the world, raising awareness about psychological issues in patients with kidney failure and transplantation. Dr. Jindal is associated with several medical organizations and was recently appointed Commissioner of the Governor’s Office on Service and Volunteerism for the State of Maryland.