Dr. Barış Akın

Prof. Dr. Barış Akın graduated from the Ankara University Faculty of Medicine in 1995 and earned the ECFMG certificate, qualifying him to practice medicine in the United States. In 2000, he completed his General Surgery residency at Ankara University and became a certified general surgeon. He then pursued advanced training in organ transplant surgery at Ohio State University, completing his fellowship in 2004. During this period, he received certification from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and continued his career as an organ transplant surgeon in the USA. While in the United States, Prof. Dr. Akın performed over 250 kidney transplants and 280 laparoscopic kidney removals, earning the Young Investigator Award at the American Transplant Congress in 2004. That same year, he returned to Turkey to establish and lead the Kidney Transplant Center at Florence Nightingale Group Hospitals, where he continues to serve as Director. To date, he has performed more than 1,500 kidney transplants, achieving outcomes comparable to the world’s top transplant centers. Under his leadership, the center has also become a training hub for transplant surgeons and coordinators from Turkey and abroad. In 2009, Prof. Dr. Akın developed the innovative “endoscopic hand-assisted retroperitoneoscopy” technique — a safer, minimally invasive approach for living kidney donors. He has since performed over 1,300 surgeries using this method. Additionally, he is among the world’s pioneers of the Robotic Retroperitonoscopic Surgery Technique. Beyond his clinical achievements, Prof. Dr. Akın has trained numerous surgeons and served as an instructor at leading national and international kidney transplant courses, including the European Transplant Association’s Live Kidney Donation Training Program (since 2016) and the International Transplant Network’s training courses, which he has chaired four times. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles in international journals and has played a key role in establishing and advancing kidney transplant programs in several countries, including at the University of Baku in Azerbaijan. Prof. Dr. Barış Akın currently serves as President of the Kidney Board of the European Society of Transplantation (ESOT) and as the Turkish representative of the European Union of Transplant Surgery (UEMS).