Richard Allen is a Melbourne trained surgeon who fell in love with all things transplantation in his post fellowship training in Oxford with Sir Peter Morris. In 1986 he established the Kidney Transplant unit at Westmead Hospital in Sydney and in 1987, a successful kidney/pancreas transplant program. He first visited Vietnam in 2009 at the invitation of ISN and has returned 18 times. Together with Australian colleagues and TTS friends from abroad, he has facilitated transplant education and supported the Vietnamese clinicians in developing a national transplant society (VSOT) and the sharing of deceased donor organs in Vietnam. In 2003 he was appointed to the Chair of Transplantation Surgery at The University of Sydney, based at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. In 2017 he was appointed Emeritus Professor.