PRESENTERS
NISHA BANSAL, MD, MAS is an Assistant Professor and an Investigator at the Kidney Research Institute at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, WA. Her research focuses on blood pressure and cardiovascular disease in patients with chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease. She is particularly interested in the pathogenesis and treatment of heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias in patients with kidney disease. Dr. Bansal is also an active clinician and educator. She is currently the Associate Program Director for the Nephrology fellowship program at UW. Dr. Bansal is originally from Connecticut and completed her internal medicine residency at Tufts Medical Center and her nephrology fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.
MICHELE BARNARD, PhD is the deputy chief of the Review Branch and chief of the Special Emphasis Panels Section I at the NIDDK. Her responsibilities include overseeing the review of applications for a wide range of topics, from translational research, to time-sensitive grants, to ancillary studies. Her research interests include endothelial and epithelial permeability, ion pumps and channels, and the role of activation of leukocytes and subsequent oxygen-radical generation on tissue injury in sepsis and ischemia/reperfusion injury. Tissue injury from sepsis and ischemia/reperfusion contributes to high levels of illness and death. A better understanding of the cellular processes involved in tissue injury may improve methods of prevention and treatment. Dr. Barnard also regularly participates in applicant training workshops; she presents on the role of the scientific review administrator in the peer review process, and contributes to mock study sections.
HAROLD FELDMAN, MD, MSCE is the George S. Pepper Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine; Professor of Epidemiology, Medicine (Renal Electrolyte and Hypertension Division), and Medicine in Pediatrics; Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology (DBE); and Director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB) at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Feldman is the PI of the Scientific and Data Coordinating Center for NIDDK’s Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort Study (CRIC). Dr. Feldman also leads NIDDK’s Hemodialysis Fistula Maturation Cohort Study and the Coordinating Center of its Chronic Kidney Disease Biomarkers Consortium. Dr. Feldman’s published scholarship of more than 175 research publications has appeared in many of the leading journals of clinical research.
JEFFREY C. FINK, MD, MS is a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at The University of Maryland, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. He spent 17 years building a clinical and academic program in the Division of Nephrology and in 2014 he returned to general medicine, assuming the role of Division Chief of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Fink is a CRIC site investigator, an active participant on the CRIC Steering committee, and is involved in all study-wide proceedings. He currently serves as the co-chair of the Publications Executive and Primary and Ancillary Measures committees. He was also principal investigator on the CRIC-Safety ancillary study (R01 DK090008), which retrospectively examines the frequency of safety events in the CRIC cohort.
SUSAN FURTH, MD, PhD is a pediatric nephrologist and the Division Chief of Nephrology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is also a Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Furth is one of the PI’s leading the CKiD cohort study since its inception in 2003. She is a Standing Member of the NIH/NIDDK Scientific Review Group for Career Development Awards and Institutional Training Grants. Dr. Furth has held a mid-career K24 award in mentoring patient oriented research for the last 8 years, and has mentored multiple junior faculty who have progressed to successful research oriented careers in nephrology, urology and rheumatology. In 2016 she was awarded the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Faculty mentor award. She is the Associate Chair for Academic Affairs in the Department of Pediatrics and Chairs the Department’s Committee on Appointments and Promotions. She has recently been appointed as a Co-editor of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.
ALI GHARAVI, MD is the Jay Meltzer Professor of Nephrology and Hypertension and Chief of the Division of Nephrology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His is also the Director of the Columbia Institute of Genomic Medicine Initiative for Kidney Diseases. He applies state of the art genomics approaches to resolve the pathogenesis of complex traits and through this work he has identified many genes and loci predisposing to glomerulonephritis, hypertension, polycystic liver disease and congenital kidney defects. The ultimate goal of these projects is to reclassify kidney disorders based on their underlying molecular etiology and individualize care for patients with nephropathy. To achieve this goal, he collaborates with many basic and clinical investigators worldwide and has a successful track record of organizing multidisciplinary groups to bring difficult projects to completion. He is the principal investigator of multiple NIH R01 studies and is also co-Principal Investigator of an NIDDK-sponsored George-O’Brien Urology Center (multiPI with Drs. Mendelsohn and Barasch) aiming to apply a multidisciplinary approach to study the genetic basis of urinary tract defects. Together with Drs. Hripcsak and Weng, Dr. Gharavi also leads the Columbia eMERGE project, which aims to study and implement the return of genetic testing results in electronic health records. Dr. Gharavi’s work has broader implications in Precision Medicine research, and he is now studying the optimal indications for genomic technologies for the diagnosis and targeted care of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Dr. Gharavi’s research program has also served as a vehicle for training of many students, postdoctoral fellows and clinician-scientists, including faculty members who now have independent careers in kidney research.
TAMARA ISAKOVA, MD, MMSc is an associate professor in medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the Center for Translational Metabolism and Health. Dr. Isakova is a nephrologist with clinical research experience in the area of disordered mineral metabolism in chronic kidney disease. She is a graduate of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and she completed internal medicine training at Massachusetts General Hospital and nephrology training at the combined Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women's Hospital nephrology fellowship program. Dr. Isakova provides clinical care for patients with chronic kidney disease, bone and mineral metabolism disorders, and kidney stones.
MARK MITSNEFES, MD is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He is an established clinical investigator with expertise in the area of development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in children with chronic kidney disease (CKD). His long-term career goal is to define biologic targets for interventions to prevent and slow progression of CVD in children with CKD. His most recent grants include an R01 studying adiponectin in CKD and a K24 grant looking at early biomarkers of CVD in children with CKD. Since initiation in 2003, he has been a co-investigator and co-chair of cardiovascular subcommittee for the CKiD study. He also serves as a PI of Participant and Clinical Interaction (PCI) Core and Program Director of Clinical Translational Research Center (CTRC) of CTSA grant at the University of Cincinnati.
DAVID M. NATHAN, MD is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is Director of the Clinical Research Center and of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. His major research focus is the study and development of new methods to normalize glucose metabolism in diabetes mellitus and the long-term consequences of such therapy. He was one of the architects of the iconic Diabetes Control and Complications Trial that demonstrated the ability to dramatically reduce the long-term complications of Type 1 diabetes, and currently chairs its long-term follow-up, the Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications Study. Dr. Nathan also chairs the multi-center NIH Diabetes Prevention Program and the GRADE Comparative Effectiveness Study of Type 2 diabetes. Dr. Nathan has led the international Expert Committee on the Diagnosis of Diabetes and the international Consensus Committee on the Treatment of Type 2 diabetes. With more than 500 publications, chapters, and books in the medical literature, Dr. Nathan is an internationally recognized expert on diabetes and its treatment and complications. He was awarded the Outstanding Clinician Award by the American Diabetes Association in 2002 and the Distinguished Scientist Award by the National Institute of Diabetes Digestive and Kidney Disease, NIH, in 2010. In 2015, Dr. Nathan was given the inaugural Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Diabetes Research Award by the American Diabetes Association.
SANKAR D. NAVANEETHAN, MD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas and also the Associate Director of the Dan L. Duncan Institute of Clinical and Translational Research, Baylor College of Medicine. His research interests include: obesity and intentional weight loss in chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and lung diseases in CKD, health services research and systematic reviews in nephrology. He is the Principal investigator for ongoing NIH-funded CRIC-Visceral adiposity and physical fitness in CKD study.
DEREK NG, PhD is an Assistant Scientist within the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Ng’s area of expertise is in the analysis and conduct of cohort studies, in particular the Chronic Kidney Disease in Children Cohort Study (CKiD) and the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) in which he serves as co-investigator of these two studies. He is interested in validation methods for laboratory measurements to improve efficiency and simplify the design and conduct of cohort studies, with a particular emphasis on kidney function. Other areas of interest include social epidemiology, health disparities and the intersection of aging and kidney health in the context of HIV infection. Dr. Ng's methodological interests are in applied statistical methods in epidemiology, particularly causal methods, including marginal structural models and inverse probability weighting, for meaningful public health inference. In addition to developing equations to simply procedures for directly measured GFR in diverse populations, Dr. Ng has co-authored several papers in the field of pediatric nephrology presenting CKiD data, including the effect of secondhand smoke exposure on disease progression, the association of income on kidney disease severity, and the relationship of abnormal birth history on blood pressure. More recently, Dr. Ng and co-authors published a description of APOL1-associated glomerular disease in African-American children, which combined data from the CKiD and Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network (NEPTUNE) studies.
ANTHONY PORTALE, MD is a professor of pediatrics at UCSF, chief of the Division of Pediatric Nephrology, medical director of Pediatric Kidney Transplantation, and program director of the Pediatric Nephrology Fellowship Training Program. Dr. Portale completed his undergraduate studies in physics at St. Joseph’s University and received his MD from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine. He completed pediatric residency training at the State University of New York at Buffalo-affiliated Children’s Hospital of Buffalo and fellowship training in pediatric nephrology at UCSF. He is certified in pediatrics and pediatric nephrology by the American Board of Pediatrics. Dr. Portale joined the faculty at UCSF in 1981 and was appointed division chief of Pediatric Nephrology in 1989. He specializes in the care of children with acute and chronic kidney disease, including pediatric dialysis and kidney transplantation, and works in close collaboration with colleagues in transplant surgery and pediatric urology at UCSF. He served as the director of pediatric dialysis from 1995 to 2010. Dr. Portale also has special clinical expertise in genetic and acquired disorders of vitamin D, bone, and mineral metabolism and renal tubular diseases.
VASAN RAMACHANDRAN, MD, DM, FACC, FAHA is a noninvasive cardiologist with specialization in cardiovascular epidemiology, and the Principal investigator of and director of the Framingham Heart Study. He is the Director of the echocardiography and vascular testing laboratory at the Framingham Heart Study and directs its fellowship training program. His epidemiological research has focused on 4 inter-related areas: the epidemiology of congestive heart failure, population-based vascular testing and echocardiography, epidemiology of high blood pressure, and exercise physiology and exercise test responses in asymptomatic individuals and prognostic information; relations to endothelial function. Dr. Ramachandran is also the Chair of the Steering Committee for NIDDK’s CKD Biomarkers Consortium.
ATUL SAHAI, PhD serves as the Scientific Review Officer for Pathobiology of Kidney Disease study section at the Center for Scientific Review (CSR), NIH. Before joining CSR in 2010, he served as a Scientific Review Officer for the NIDDK where he organized the review of program projects, centers, career development, and ancillary grant applications in kidney and urological diseases. Dr. Sahai was an associate professor in the Department of Medicine/Nephrology Division at Northwestern University, Chicago, before joining the NIDDK/NIH in 2005. The major focus of his research involved delineating the role of chronic local hypoxia in renal and vascular cell growth and fibrosis associated with diabetes and hypertension
MATT SAMPSON, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Pediatric Nephrology at the University of Michigan. He did his clinical training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and received a Master’s in Clinical Epidemiology, with a focus on human genetics, from the University of Pennsylvania. His lab focuses on the analysis of high-throughput genomic and transcriptomic data to understand the genetic basis of nephrotic syndrome. They use systems genetics methods to discover novel nephrotic syndrome-associated genetic variants and elucidate the biological mechanisms by which they contribute to disease. His lab also uses genetic epidemiology to describe the clinical impact for those harboring nephrotic syndrome-associated variants. In addition, they develop novel computational methods and bioinformatics tools to analyze and interpret large-scale sequencing data in cases and the general population.
JULIA JARRARD SCIALLA, MD, MHS is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in Nephrology at Duke University and a faculty member at the Duke Clinical Research Institute. Dr. Scialla trained in Internal Medicine, Nephrology and Clinical Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the role of metabolic complications in the progression of kidney disease and its complications. In particular, she studies abnormal phosphate homeostasis as a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease and the role of acid-base abnormalities and dietary acid loading in the progression of kidney disease. The goal of her work in phosphate and acid-base homeostasis is to identify novel approaches to kidney and cardiovascular disease prevention engaging pharmacologic and nutritional strategies.
RAYMOND TOWNSEND, MD is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Hypertension Program. He recently received the 2016 Physician of the Year Award of the American Heart Association (AHA). Dr. Townsend has served continuously as the Principal Investigator of the CRIC clinical center at the University of Pennsylvania Clinical Center since the project began in 2001. He was the PI of the CRIC ancillary R01 on pulse wave velocity and CKD. His research interests include the role of blood vessel dynamics in chronic kidney disease progression and the development of cardiovascular disease in patients with chronic kidney disease. He currently serves as the co-chair of the Primary and Ancillary Measures committee for the CRIC Study.
BRADLEY A. WARADY, MD is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Director, Division of Nephrology and Director of Dialysis and Transplantation at The Children's Mercy Hospital. Dr. Warady currently serves as Co-Principal Investigator of the N.I.H.-funded Chronic Kidney Disease in Children (CKiD) Study and the International Pediatric Dialysis Network (IPDN). He is Vice President of the Board of Directors of the North American Pediatric Renal Trials and Collaborative Studies (NAPRTCS), Chair of the Pediatric Liaison Committee of the International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis (ISPD), Treasurer and Fellowship Committee Chair of the International Pediatric Nephrology Association (IPNA) and a national board member of the National Kidney Foundation. Dr. Warady co-chaired the National Kidney Foundation KDOQI workgroup which published guidelines on the Nutritional Management for Children with CKD and he was a member of the writing committees for the KDOQI Pediatric Guidelines on Bone Management and Peritoneal Dialysis Adequacy. He also co-edited the books CAPD/CCPD in Children and Pediatric Dialysis and has published more than 400 articles and book chapters.
ROBERT A. STAR, MD - Click for Bio
GRIFFIN P. RODGERS, MD, MACP - Click for Bio
JOHN W. KUSEK, PhD - Click for Bio
MARVA MOXEY-MIMS, MD - Click for Bio