2013 Award Recipients
Robert G. Narins Award
Mark E. Rosenberg, MD, FASN
The American Society of Nephrology presented its Robert G. Narins Award to Mark E. Rosenberg, MD, FASN, at Kidney Week 2013.
In addition to being a professor of medicine, Dr. Rosenberg is vice dean for education at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. In this position, his many responsibilities for medical education include admissions, the four years of medical school, graduate medical education, and continuing medical education. Prior to joining the university, he was the chief of medicine and director of the primary and specialty medicine service line at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System from 2009 to 2012.
Dr. Rosenberg has been involved in medical education at many levels. He served as the fellowship director of the nephrology training program at the University of Minnesota, as founding and principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health training grant in nephrology, and as the senior fellowship coordinator of all fellowship programs in the department of medicine. For ASN, he chaired the executive committee of the nephrology training program directors, chaired the postgraduate education committee, served on the education committee, and is the outgoing education director for Kidney Week.
Dr. Rosenberg's other educational accomplishments include working on one of the first web-based evaluation systems for residency training programs, implementing the electronic residency application service (ERAS) and working on a specialty matching service for nephrology fellowship programs, and developing in-training examinations for fellowship programs. He developed the mobile nephrology handbook, NephroToGo, initially as a program for personal assistant devices and later an app for Apple's iOS mobile operating system.
Dr. Rosenberg served on the council of the Association of Specialty Professors and chaired its education committee. He was associate editor of the Nephrology Self-Assessment Program (NephSAP) from 2001 and 2005. He received the distinguished professor award from the Association of Specialty Professors for contributions to specialty medicine, only the second nephrologist to receive this award.
He attended medical school at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, and did his internal medicine residency and nephrology fellowship at the University of Minnesota. He served as director of the division of renal diseases and hypertension at the University of Minnesota from 2000 to 2009.
Belding H. Scribner Award
Andrew S. Levey, MD
The American Society of Nephrology presented its Belding H. Scribner Award to Andrew S. Levey, MD, at Kidney Week 2013.
The Belding H. Scribner Award will be tendered to Andrew S. Levey, MD, for his career-long contributions to the practice of nephrology.
Dr. Levey is the Dr. Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine and chief of the division of nephrology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
Established in 1995, the Belding H. Scribner Award is presented to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the care of patients with renal disorders or have substantially influenced the clinical practice of nephrology. Dr. Levey has made significant contributions in patient care, research, clinical practice guidelines, training, and health-care policy related to chronic kidney disease (CKD).
His involvement in patient care includes serving the Tufts Medical Center as director of the dialysis clinic from 1981 to 1990 and medical director for renal transplantation from 1983 to 2001.
His research spans a wide range, including serving as principal nephrologist co-investigator for the Modification of Diet and Renal Disease Study, sponsored by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). He and his colleagues used this large database to develop an equation to estimate glomerular filtration rate (GFR) from serum creatinine. He also led the NIDDK effort to pool databases from studies to develop equations based on creatinine, cystatin C, and other filtration markers. The use of GFR equations to estimate kidney function and inform prognosis has transformed research and clinical practice in CKD.
An authority on clinical practice guidelines in CKD, Dr. Levey led the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) task force on cardiovascular disease in 1998. He chaired two NKF working groups on outcome quality initiatives. He led three global conferences on improving kidney disease outcomes. He directed the Tufts Center on Guideline Development and Implementation from 2003 until 2011.
Dr. Levey has been active in postgraduate fellowship training and mentoring of junior faculty. He directs a large research fellowship training program. He directed the Tufts University course for second-year medical students in renal pathophysiology from 1981 to 1988.
Dr. Levey's contributions to policy include serving as a member of the National Kidney Disease Education Program of the NIDDK. He co-chaired the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2007 expert panel that developed strategies for preventing development and progression of kidney disease.
Dr. Levey was associate editor of the Annals in Internal Medicine, and is currently editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.
John P. Peters Award
David J. Salant, MBChB, MD
The American Society of Nephrology presented its John P. Peters Award to David J. Salant, MD, at Kidney Week 2013.
Dr. Salant is professor of medicine at Boston University Medical Center, where he has been chief of nephrology and director of the nephrology training program since 1987. The John P. Peters Award is given for outstanding contributions to improving the lives of patients and to furthering the understanding of the kidney in health and disease, and Dr. Salant's research has added greatly to this understanding.
Supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he has conducted extensive research on immune disorders of the kidneys. His work has focused on mechanisms of immune deposition and the role of complement in glomerular diseases as well as the structural biology of the podocyte.
Dr. Salant was one of the earliest proponents of the notion that podocyte injury forms the basis of most, if not all, proteinuric kidney diseases. He was among the first to identify the podocyte as the primary target of injury in antibody-mediated glomerular disease.
In a landmark New England Journal of Medicine paper in 2009, Dr. Salant and his colleagues described their discovery that a high proportion of patients with idiopathic membranous nephropathy have circulating autoantibodies to the M-type phospholipase A2 receptor on human podocytes. He has authored more than 150 scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters.
Dr. Salant has received several awards and honors, including an investigator award from the American Heart Association, election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and the Jean Hamburger Award from the International Society of Nephrology. He has served on several NIH advisory panels and on the editorial boards of several major nephrology journals. He has also played a prominent educational role nationally as chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine in Nephrology.
Dr. Salant graduated from the Witwatersrand University Medical School in South Africa and completed his clinical training at the Johannesburg General Hospital. He received research training at Boston University with Dr. William Couser and joined the faculty in 1979.
Homer W. Smith Award
Stefan Somlo, MD
The Homer W. Smith Award was presented to Stefan Somlo, MD, at Kidney Week 2013.
Dr. Somlo is C.N.H. Long Professor of Medicine (Nephrology) and professor of genetics at the Yale University School of Medicine. The Homer W. Smith Award recognizes individuals who contribute to our basic understanding of how the kidneys function in health and disease, and Dr. Somlo's contributions have greatly advanced our knowledge of human polycystic diseases.
Dr. Somlo's seminal contributions to the fields of polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and liver disease began with disease gene discoveries in the pre-genome era. His later studies yielded insights into the genetic mechanisms of PKD, the functions of polycystins, and the innovative application of genetically complex animal models to in vivo and preclinical discoveries in PKD. Dr. Somlo's laboratory identified the second gene for dominant polycystic kidney disease and two genes for familial forms of polycystic liver disease without kidney cysts. His group was part of a consortium that identified the recessive polycystic kidney disease gene.
Dr. Somlo's laboratory translated these gene discoveries into mechanistic studies of polycystic diseases using biochemical, cell biological, and in vivo approaches. Much of his laboratory's efforts have focused on defining disease pathogenesis using mouse models of polycystic diseases. Their work has also explored the effects of discrete signaling pathways in cyst formation and the genetic interrelationships between different polycystic disease genes.
Dr. Somlo has headed the section of nephrology at Yale since 2003. He has led a cross-disciplinary, multi-investigator polycystic disease research program at Yale and has developed clinical and translational components to implement his findings in basic science. He serves as an elected councilor for the Association of American Physicians and received the Lillian Jean Kaplan International Prize for Polycystic Kidney Disease Research.
Dr. Somlo is a graduate of Harvard College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. He did his clinical training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Yale and was on the faculty at Albert Einstein before returning to Yale.
Donald W. Seldin Young Investigator Award
Jeremy Stuart Duffield, MD, MBChB, PhD
The Young Investigator Award was presented to Jeremy S. Duffield, MD, PhD, at Kidney Week 2013.
Dr. Duffield is associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle, where he also directs the inflammation research laboratory at the Kidney Research Institute.
An established National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) investigator, he heads a laboratory focused on the role of the innate immune response cells called monocytes in injury and repair and on the role of the mesenchymal cells known as pericytes and fibroblasts in microvascular remodeling and fibrosis. This research has led to several candidate therapeutics now being tested in clinical trials.
Dr. Duffield received young investigator awards from the British Renal Association, the U.K.'s Medical Research Society, and the NIDDK; a Gottschalk Award from the American Society of Nephrology; and a challenge grant from the National Institutes of Health.
In 2011 he was elected a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He also serves on scientific study sections at the NIDDK and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. He is on the scientific advisory boards of Promedior and Regulus Therapeutics, companies dedicated to the development of anti-fibrotic therapies.
He also practices nephrology at the University of Washington Medical Center with special interests in systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic vasculitis, and pregnancy-related kidney disorders.
Dr. Duffield studied medicine and developmental biology at Oxford University and obtained a doctorate in medicine and immunology at Edinburgh University in the U.K. He moved to the United States in 2003 and worked as assistant professor of medicine at Harvard medical school until 2010.
President's Medal
Lori Hartwell
The ASN President's Medal was awarded to patient advocate Lori Hartwell at Kidney Week 2013.
Lifelong kidney patient and Renal Support Network (RSN) President Lori Hartwell received the ASN President's Medal for her influential work in patient support and advocacy in a special presentation during the plenary session on Thursday, November 7.
Hartwell has provided an inspiring model for living with chronic kidney disease since being diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome at age 2. She has survived 13 years of dialysis and more than 40 surgeries. Hartwell founded the patient-led RSN in 1993 to instill “health, happiness, and hope” into the lives of fellow patients. As RSN president, Hartwell travels widely nationally and internationally, educating and inspiring people with kidney disease and health care professionals with her stories, insight, and humor.