Dr. Pierson is a member of the Division of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center and a staff surgeon at the Baltimore VA Medical Center. He is an Associate Professor of Surgery, Clinical Director of Heart and Lung Tranplantation, and has an active research lab funded by grants from the NIH, the VA Merit Review Program, and various industrial collaborators. His laboratory is involved in projects that include defining the pathogenesis of hyperacute lung rejection, developing immunosuppressive strategies which may induce the long term acceptance of pig heart and lung xenografts in primates, and investigating the tolerogenic potential of costimulation pathway blockade in allograft and xenograft models.