Dr. Berney is an Emeritus Professor of Surgery at the University of Geneva School of Medicine, and the former chief of the Division of Transplantation at the University of Geneva Hospitals. He currently serves as the Medical Director of Bokeria University Hospital and is a Professor of Surgery at Ilia State University, in Tbilisi, Georgia. He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, with an MSc degree in 1981, and from the University of Geneva School of Medicine in 1987. He specialized in General and Visceral Surgery in Switzerland and in Transplantation Surgery in Brussels, Belgium and Miami, Florida. From 2002 to 2022, he was the head of the Cell Isolation and Transplantation Center/director of the Islet and Pancreas Transplant Programs at the University of Geneva Hospitals, one of the most active worldwide, as part of the Swiss-French GRAGIL consortium..
He is a member of several Surgical and Transplantation Societies. In 2007, he became the founding chairman of the European Pancreas and Islet Transplantation Association (EPITA) and has held this position until 2013. He served as President of the Swiss Transplantation Society (2014-2016), the European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT, 2015-2017) and the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (IPITA, 2017-2019). His research interests include clinical islet transplantation, islet cell biology, islet graft imaging, anti-inflammatory strategies to improve islet engraftment and pancreas bioengineering. He is the recipient of several research grants and awards and the author or co-author of over 350 articles and book chapters. He has sat on the editorial board of several peer-reviewed scientific journals, and currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Transplant International since March 2021.