Robert Merion

Robert M. Merion, MD

Professor Emeritus, Transplant Surgery

Biography

Dr. Robert Merion is a Professor Emeritus of Surgery (Active) in the Section of Transplantation. Dr. Merion has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Surgery since 1986. He served for ten years as the Chief of the Division of Transplantation, and also served as the Director of the University of Michigan Transplant Center. Dr. Merion's clinical interests, from 1986 until retiring from clinical practice in 2014, spanned the range of liver, kidney, and pancreas transplantation in adults and children, management of immunosuppressive therapy and its complications, and vascular access surgery.  Dr. Merion is a past president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and was the inaugural recipient of the ASTS Francis Moore Mentorship in Transplantation award. He was the director of the UM ASTS-approved transplant surgery fellowship program for 23 years.

In 2009, Dr. Merion was appointed as president and CEO of Arbor Research Collaborative for Health, a 501(c)(3) research organization focused on the application of biostatistics and data analytics to clinical and public policy research on chronic diseases. From 2000 to 2010, Dr. Merion was the Clinical Transplant Director for the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) funded under a federal research contract from the Health Resources and Services Administration. With more than 20 years of continuous federal funding at UM and at Arbor Research, Dr. Merion has been the principal investigator on multiple scientific and data coordinating centers (DCCs) for NIDDK and NIAID-funded clinical research networks, and is currently leading network DCCs studying living donor liver transplantation, childhood liver diseases, and lower urinary tract dysfunction. Dr. Merion’s scientific output includes nearly 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts.