Dr. Margarita Camacho is the Surgical Director of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center’s heart transplant program, where has performed over 700 heart transplants, 600 durable and acute VAD's, and has been the Principal Investigator on nine VAD trials. She has served as the Chair of the STS Workforce on End-Stage Cardiopulmonary Disease, and co-chaired two STS symposia on mechanical circulatory support. She is Past President of Women in Thoracic Surgery, the NJ Chapter of the STS, and is the first woman to receive the American Heart Association Harvey Nussbaum Distinguished Service Award. Her passion for teaching residents, fellows and medical students has extended to high school students, to whom she lectured at the Liberty Science Center for the last 12-1/2 years.