The UAB Department of Surgery is proud to announce that Saulat Sheikh, M.D., will serve as the surgical director of the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute’s Liver Transplantation Program, effective Wednesday, July 1, 2026.
Dr. Sheikh joined the UAB Department of Surgery in July 2020 as an assistant professor and has led numerous record-breaking procedures, including Alabama’s first adult living donor liver transplant and the first pediatric split-liver transplant in the health system in over a decade. Before her appointment to the role, Dr. Sheikh led the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program.
Dr. Sheikh attended medical school at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, where she was conferred the Best Graduate Award. She subsequently completed her general surgery residency at York Hospital, in York, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the UAB’s abdominal transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery fellowship before joining the Division of Transplantation.
“We are honored for Dr. Sheikh to assume this role, given her extensive work and dedication to increasing the accessibility of liver transplantation across the Southeast,” said Jacqueline Garonzik Wang, M.D., Ph.D., who serves as director of the Division of Transplantation and co-director of the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute. “Dr. Sheikh works tirelessly for her patients and will continue the momentum of the program in providing advanced care across the treatment spectrum.”
Dr. Sheikh will assume the role as successor to Robert Cannon, M.D., who will now serve as the Section Chief of Transplant Surgery at the University of Oklahoma.
“UAB’s Comprehensive Transplant Institute has long been known for its legacy of excellence, and I look forward to our team’s continued contribution to that narrative in all aspects of care in liver transplantation,” adds Dr. Sheikh. “I’m grateful to each of my mentors and colleagues for their support and for the mission we all strive to uphold in furthering the field of transplantation.”