2026 Planning Committee
Maneesh Kumar Misra, MS, PhD, F(ACHI)
Dr. Maneesh Kumar Misra, MS, PhD, F(ACHI) is Co-Director Histocompatibility, Immunogenetics and Disease profiling laboratory, and the Associate Professor of Clinical Pathology at Stanford University. His research mainly focuses on the quality improvement of the assays used in the detection and functional characterization of alloantibodies.
Betty Hunter, MS, CHS
Betty Hunter is a 1995 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and began her career at UPMC in 1996. She currently serves as manager of the HLA laboratory and is a commissioner for the ASHI Accreditation Review Board.
Kristina Gaines, BS, CHS(ACHI)
Kristina is the clinical laboratory manager of the Vitalant HLA lab in Phoenix, AZ. She has been working in HLA since 2012, supporting both bone marrow and solid organ transplantation.
Dennis Helmick, ASCP, CHT
Dennis Helmick is lead clinical scientist at UPMC with a degree from West Virgina University. He has been involved with solid organ and bone marrow transplant for 10 years.
Denice Kong, BS, CHT
Denice Kong has over 25 years of experience in HLA and immunogenetics, where she oversees technical, operational, and financial functions, ensuring compliance with ASHI, CLIA, and CAP regulations, and leads the development and implementation of histocompatibility testing to support approximately 900 transplants annually.
Matthew Najor, PhD F(ACHI)
Dr. Matthew Najor is an Assistant Professor and Associate Clinical Director of the Histocompatibility Laboratory in the Department of Pathology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. His primary research interest focuses on the structural integrity of HLA antibody-protein complexes and their clinical implications in transplantation.
David Pinelli, PhD, F(ACHI)
Dr. Pinelli is the Co-Director of the Transplant Immunology Laboratory at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He obtained a PhD in Immunology and Molecular Pathogenesis from Emory University in 2016 and completed his director-in-training fellowship at Northwestern University under the mentorship of Dr. Anat Tambur in 2020.