During his tenure at Pitt, Dr. Simmons has received many honors. Locally, he was given the annual award from the Southwestern Pennsylvania Chapter of ACS and the Gift of Life Award from the National Kidney Foundation of Western Pennsylvania and was named Man of the Year (1998) in Science by Vectors of Pittsburgh. He was selected by Archives of Surgery as one of two dozen 20th–century surgeons who have made significant contributions to surgery, and in 2001, ACS dedicated the Surgical Forum to Dr. Simmons. In 2004, Dr. Simmons received the Medawar Prize for his work in transplantation immunology and infectious disease. He was awarded the Starzl Prize in Transplantation and Immunology in 2005 and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of University Surgeons in 2010. The Allegheny County Medical Society Foundation honored Dr. Simmons with the Ralph C. Wilde Leadership Award in March 2014. Most recently, Dr. Simmons was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the local National Kidney Foundation on March 7, 2015, as the inaugural recipient. Dr. Simmons is past chair of the Surgical Forum and past president of the Society of University Surgeons, American Society of Transplant Surgeons, and Surgical Infection Society. Dr. Simmons also has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Surgery. He has authored or edited 15 books and more than 1,300 articles. In 1994, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.