Seyed Alireza Rabi, MD PhD

Dr. Seyed Alireza Rabi is a cardiac and heart transplant surgeon and surgeon-scientist at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre and Ajmera Transplant Centre, University Health Network. He is the Surgical Director of the Heart Transplant Program and a faculty member at the University of Toronto. His clinical and academic work focuses on advanced heart transplantation, ex vivo organ perfusion and technologies designed to expand the availability of donor hearts.

Dr. Rabi completed his undergraduate degree in Engineering Science at the University of Toronto before earning his MD and PhD in Immunology from Johns Hopkins University. He completed residency training in cardiothoracic surgery and fellowship training in heart and lung transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, along with postdoctoral research training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He subsequently joined the faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School before returning to Toronto to join UHN.

Dr. Rabi specializes in heart transplantation and advanced ex vivo organ perfusion. His research program investigates technologies that can preserve, assess and improve donor hearts outside the body, including hypothermic oxygenated perfusion and normothermic machine perfusion. His work aims to better understand donor-heart viability, extend preservation time and ultimately increase the number of hearts available for transplantation.
In 2025, Dr. Rabi led the multidisciplinary UHN team that performed Canada’s first heart transplant following donation after death by circulatory criteria. The procedure represented an important milestone in Canadian transplantation and reflected his clinical and research focus on expanding the donor pool through innovative approaches to organ preservation and assessment.

Dr. Rabi is committed to advancing heart transplantation through the integration of surgery, research, technology and multidisciplinary collaboration. His work at UHN combines complex clinical care with translational research aimed at making transplantation available to more patients and advancing the future of cardiac surgery.