Scott Wenderfer, MD, PhD, FASN - Co-Chair

Biography

Scott Wenderfer, MD, PhD, FASN is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia and Head, Division of Nephrology, at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver BC, Canada. He respectfully acknowledges that the land on which he lives, learns, teaches and practices is the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Scott received his pediatrics and nephrology training at the University of Texas in Houston. His Waututh) Nations. Scott received his pediatrics and nephrology training at the University of Texas in Houston. His research interests include lupus nephritis, renal vasculitis, glomerulonephritis and nephrotic syndrome. He has been participating in the PNRC since 2012.

Jon B. Klein, MD, PhD - Co-Chair

Director, Clinical Translational Sciences Institute
Vice Dean for Research, School of Medicine
James Graham Brown Foundation Endowed Chair in Proteomics University of Louisville

Biography

Dr Klein, a New Orleans native, received much of his education in Texas attending the University of Texas at Austin for undergraduate education and received his medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, the original medical campus in the University of Texas System. He served a residency in Internal Medicine at Kansas University Medical Center and completed a fellowship in Adult Nephrology at the University of Louisville and subsequently earned a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Louisville. He is Professor of Medicine and a clinical nephrologist practicing at the Robley Rex VA Medical Center. He currently holds the James Graham Brown Foundation Endowed Chair in Proteomics at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. His laboratory has received federal research grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, Veterans Administration, or Department of Energy continuously for more than 30 years. In 2013 he was appointed the Vice-Dean for Research at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. He has authored 230 peer-reviewed papers and is known in the kidney research community for introducing proteomic analysis to kidney research and subsequently as a co-discoverer of several target antigens in autoimmune kidney disease including the PLA 2 receptor in primary membranous nephropathy.

Antonia Bouts, MD, PhD, FGA - Committee Member

Assistant professor of Pediatric Nephrology, Emma Children’s Hospital, Amsterdam University Medical Center, the Netherlands

Biography

Dr. Bouts is a Pediatric Nephrologist in the Emma Children’s Hospital, Amsterdam University Medical Center

(AUMC), the Netherlands. She graduated from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Dr. Bouts did her Pediatric Residency at Maastricht University Hospital and the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam and her Pediatric Nephrology Fellowship at AUMC, location AMC, the Netherlands. She combined her fellowship with a PhD traject and defended her dissertation in 2001. Between 2000 and 2004 she worked in Leiden University Medical Center as general pediatrician and pediatric nephrologist. From 2004 until now she is working in the AUMC and responsible for the education of pediatric nephrology trainees. Dr. Bouts is coordinator of Pediatric Kidney Transplant Program and of expertise center for rare anomalies of kidneys and urinary tract in children of AUMC. She participates in the Dutch pediatric transplantation working group (KINT), the European Interdisciplinary Study Group of Pediatric Transplantation (Certain), the European Reference Network TransplantChild and ERKNet. For the ESPN she is chair of the Working Group Glomerular Diseases. She is Principle Investigator of the LEARNS Consortium granted by the

Dutch Kidney Foundation: a clinical and basic scientific study in children with first episode of idiopathic nephrotic syndrome focusing on the prevention of first relapse with combination therapy of prednisolone and levamisole, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of levamisole and prednisolone, Health-Related Quality of Life,\ Immunomics and Podocyte research.

Dr. Susan Samuel – Committee Member

Biography

Dr. Samuel is a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, and a member of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the O’Brien Institute of Public Health. She holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Precision Medicine and Data Science in Child Health. She received her undergraduate medical degree from the University of British Columbia, and completed postgraduate medical training in pediatrics and nephrology at SickKids Hospital in Toronto. She has a MSc in Clinical Epidemiology from the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Her research goal is to improve care and outcomes of children with chronic disease, in particular those with kidney disease. She leads the Canadian Childhood Nephrotic Syndrome Project, a national initiative designed to evaluate the impact of care variation on patient outcomes and to conduct clinical trials. She also leads the Transition Navigator

Trial research team, a multi-disciplinary group evaluating effectiveness of interventions to improve transition to adult care. Her work is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and various foundations. She serves on national and international committees working to increase research capacity, and to improve translation of evidence into practice. She is passionate about mentoring and guiding clinicians towards academic and scientific careers. In her role as Director of the ENRICH (Empowering Next-generation Researchers In perinatal and Child Health) health research training platform, she is helping scholars establish successful careers in perinatal and child health research. She has received awards for research and community contributions, including the University of Calgary Petro Canada Community Innovator Award, Top 40 under 40 Award from Avenue Magazine in Calgary, and BMO Endowed Research Award from the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

Dr. Lyndsay Harshman – Committee Member

Biography

Dr. Lyndsay Harshman is an pediatric nephrologist at the University of Iowa Stead Family Department of Pediatrics. She grew up in the Midwest and completed medical school, residency, and fellowship at the University of Iowa where she then stayed on to join the faculty. Dr. Harshman is the Medical Director of Pediatric Kidney Transplant at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital and director of the Pediatric Physician Scientist Training Pathway. Dr. Harshman has an active NIH-funded research program that focuses on brain growth and development in pediatric chronic kidney disease patients. Dr. Harshman has served as the Research-Committee chair for the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology and currently serves as an at-large member on the ASPN Council.

Dr. Aoife Waters – Committee Member

Biography

Aoife Waters MD PhD is a pediatric nephrologist with an interest in glomerular diseases including nephrotic syndrome (NS), thrombotic microangiopathies and other complement-mediated kidney diseases. I began my research career after completing clinical training at Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, London, UK and Dublin, Ireland. In 2008, I was awarded a Masters of Science degree from the University of Toronto for my dissertation outlining the pathogenetic role that ectopic podocyte Notch activation plays in manifestation of glomerulosclerosis. Following a return to the UK, I trained in molecular genetics of rare renal disorders and was awarded a PhD from University College London (UCL) in 2013. During this time, I was funded by a Medical Research Council (MRC) junior clinical research training fellowship which supported work contributing to the identification of ITGA3 as a novel NS gene associated with epidermolysis bullosa. As an early group leader at UCL and funded by a second MRC clinical scientist fellowship, we identified that podocyte Notch activation is coincident with onset of proteinuria in murine Wt1 glomerulopathy and chemical inhibition of Notch abrogated disease progression (doi: 10.1016/j.kint.2017.11.014). As a consultant at GOSH, my clinical work involved overseeing the care of a large nephrotic patient cohort within which, I identified a second novel syndromic disorder associated with steroid resistant nephrotic syndrome (SRNS). Together with Kalman Tory and his team at Semmelweiss University in Budapest, we identified NOP10 and DKC1 as the genes implicated in this novel SRNS disorder associated with sensorineural hearing loss, cataracts and enteropathy. Functional studies identified defective pseudouridylation of RNA, a previously unrecognised mechanism of kidney disease has supported an early career scientist award from Kidney Research UK to support an independent career for my postdoctoral research associate.

Matt Sampson, MD MSCE – Committee Member

Biography

Priya Verghese, MBBS (MD), MPH

Biography

Division Head of Pediatric Nephrology at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. She received her medical degree from one of the top medical schools in India (Manipal) and completed her pediatric residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She declined an invitation to be chief resident and pursued a nephrology fellowship, a Masters in Public Health and an additional transplant fellowship at the University of Washington, Seattle.

A federally funded investigator, Dr. Verghese’s research focus is to improve pediatric kidney transplant outcomes. She is an active participant in the nephrology community including but not limited to Council to the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology, Founder and Chair of the ASPN Division Head Leadership Collaborative, Fellow of the American Society of Transplantation, ASPN Liaison to the European Society of Pediatric Nephrology.

An advocate for the mission of the PNRC, she will tirelessly work towards increased opportunities for junior nephrologists and bigger and better collaborative research.

Elaine S. Kamil, MD

Biography

Elaine is the Former Director, Pediatric Nephrology, currently Professor Emeritus Pediatric Nephrology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Health Sciences Clinical Professor, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.  Attending pediatric nephrologist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. 

Dr. Kamil is a pediatric nephrologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with a long-standing interest in glomerular diseases.  After finishing her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh she completed a clinical pediatric nephrology fellowship at UCLA and a renal immunopathology research fellowship at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.  She is currently focusing on work in clinical trials in glomerular diseases.