Organ transplantation at Lund...and a new hat

I'm returning home from Lund today, where I learned about transplantation, lectured on market design and kidney exchange, and received an honorary doctorate.

Tommy Andersson at Lund has been working with ScandiaTransplant to try to help them initiate kidney exchange in Scandinavia, and I had the opportunity to meet with some of those involved. There seems to be a chance that they will be able to learn from our problems as well as our successes with kidney exchange in the U.S.  Differences in the current organization of transplantation in the Nordic countries and the U.S. will present them with some problems (e.g. in including unsensitized pairs), but may also present them with some opportunities (e.g. in integrating kidney exchange and deceased donation).

At Frank Delmonico's suggestion we also visited  the lab of Stig Steen and his colleagues at Lund University Hospital and Igelosa, to learn more about recovery of organs from deceased donors. His lab repairs organs and tests them: we saw a pig heart, beating without the pig...

Here's an announcement about the degree ceremony, held in Lund Cathedral.  The insignia of the degree Honorary Doctor of Economics and Management are a top hat and a ring, and as you are crowned with the hat there is a cannon salute from just outside the Cathedral:

Nobelpristagare och strateg nya hedersdoktorer vid Ekonomihögskolan i Lund and via Google Translate:
Nobel Laureates and strategist new honorary doctors at the School of Economics in Lund
"Professor Al Roth, 2012 Winner of the Riksbank's prize Memory of Alfred Nobel, and strategy professor JC Spender is the 2014 honorary doctorates in Economics at Lund University."

Here's a picture of me and Tommy in our finery:

Here's the program of the ceremony, and the seminar announcement.

The ceremony includes the celebration of alumni who received their doctorates 50 years ago, Jubilee Doctors. You can experience it in Swedish and Latin, more or less as I did, in the 1957 Ingemar Bergman film Wild Strawberries (from 1:20.50 to about 1:23). Thanks to Hakan Holm for that pointer.
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Update: Stig Steen's lab has posted these pictures of our visit. If the second one extended just a little lower you would see the pig heart pumping on it's own...