Rate My Professor Marc Melcher

Marc L. Melcher, MD, PhD, is Professor of Surgery (Abdominal Transplantation) at the Stanford University Medical Center and has served as Chief of the Division of Abdominal Transplant Surgery since 2023. He directs the Stanford Abdominal Transplant Surgery Fellowship from 2019 to 2025 and previously served as Program Director of the Stanford General Surgery Residency Program from 2011 to 2019, along with earlier associate director roles. Dr. Melcher earned his BA in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 1989 with high honors, PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995, and MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1999, where he was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha. He completed general surgery residency at Stanford University in 2004 and multi-organ transplantation fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco in 2006, joining Stanford's Division of Abdominal Transplantation that year. He practices at Stanford Hospital and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

Dr. Melcher's research applies artificial intelligence and algorithms to complex decisions in organ transplantation, aiming to expand access to liver and kidney transplants by improving donor organ assessment, predicting outcomes, and optimizing paired exchange. He leads the Melcher Lab in Stanford's Department of Surgery, focusing on AI for steatosis quantification and machine perfusion. Select publications include "Machine Learning Predictions for Assessing Hard-to-Place Deceased Donor Kidneys" (Kidney Medicine, 2026), "Development and validation of a machine-learning model to reduce futile procurements in donations after circulatory death in liver transplantation in the USA" (The Lancet Digital Health, 2025), "Donor-Recipient Age Mismatch and Long-Term Graft Outcomes After Adolescent Liver Transplant" (JAMA Network Open, 2026), and "Evaluating the impact of donor obesity on liver transplantation outcomes: the role of donor gender and age" (HPB, 2026). He holds United States Patent 17075535 for quantification of liver steatosis using a computer imaging platform. Honors include the John Austin Collins Award for academic mentorship and resident training (Stanford Surgery, 2019), Stanford Medicine Program Director GME Award (2019), Surgery Chiefs Award for leadership (2013), and presidency of the San Francisco Surgical Society (2019-2020). He serves on the UNOS Kidney/Pancreas Committee, Transplant Advisory Committee of the American Board of Surgery, and American Society of Transplant Surgeons Business Practice Committee (Co-Chair, 2022-2025).