Maria Siemionow is a Polish surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. She gained public notice in December, 2008, when she led a team of six surgeons in a 22-hour surgery, performing the first face transplant in the United States on Connie Culp.[1] She is currently Director of Plastic Surgery Research and Head of Microsurgery Training at the Cleveland Clinic. She is also Professor of Surgery in the Department of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. She is multilingual, speaking five languages (Polish, Russian, German, English, and Spanish).
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Siemionow received her MD from Poznan Medical Academy in 1974, receiving her PhD in microsurgery from the same institution in 1985 and "habilitation" in medical sciences in 1992. In 2007 President of Poland Lech Kaczyński honored her with the title of professor.[2]
Siemionow has received the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (presented by Ambassador Robert Kupiecki) for her contribution to the development of microsurgery and transplantation medicine.[3]