Trained in hand surgery, microsurgery, and transplant surgery, she helped organize the first VCA team in the U.S. and participated in the country’s first and second hand transplants. She was the first surgeon accepted into the Transplant Surgery and Immunobiology Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and while there, published her own model of VCA in non-human primates. Establishing VCA programs at both Emory University and Duke University, Dr. Cendales led multidisciplinary teams at each school to perform Georgia’s first hand transplant in 2011, and North Carolina’s first in 2016.