The Women in Transplantation Fellowship Award was designed to fund early career research in Sex and Gender. The two 2021 recipients, Rizky Sugianto and Friederike Martin, have focused on Cardiovascular Morbidity in Girls with CKD and Transplantation, and the Impact of Sex Hormones on Alloimmunity, respectively. They will be presenting their research and facilitating a robust discussion with senior thought leaders in the field.
Rizky I. Sugianto PhD, DDS is a post-doctoral researcher fellow at the Children’s Hospital of Hannover Medical School. She works in Dr. Anette Melk’s research group. One of her projects focuses on the exploration of sex differences in cardiovascular morbidity in children after kidney transplantation. She works with longitudinal data from the 4C-Study (a European multicenter study on children with chronic kidney disease and transplantation), the CERTAIN Registry (European Registry for Pediatric Kidney Transplant Recipients), as well as multicenter data from several pediatric nephrology units in Germany.
Friederike Martin, MD, is a surgical resident and young researcher at the Charité – Medical University in Berlin. She works with the research group of Dr. Tullius investigating the role of recipient and donor sex on transplantation outcome. Her current focus is on researching the impact of sex hormones on alloimmunity
Curie Ahn, MD, Ph.D. is a nephrologist from Seoul, Korea. She is the General Secretary of the Asian Society of Transplantation as well as a Councilor of The Transplantation of Society contributing to those societies for improving transplantation medicine especially in Asia. In addition, as a Director of the Vitallink, she has been actively participating in clinical capacity-building in nephrology and in deceased organ transplantation for the last 10 years. As a research scientist, she has established the national cohort for CKD(KNOW-CKD), ADPKD, and for organ transplantation(KOTRY, Korean Organ Transplantation Registry), to provide a translational research basis.
Dr. Bianca Davidson did her undergraduate medical training at University of Cape Town, graduating with first class honours in 2005. She did her postgraduate specialist training at Groote Schuur Hospital/University of Cape Town. She graduated as a Fellow of College of Physician in 2013. She completed her sub-specialty training in nephrology in 2017.
Dr. Davidson is a passionate teacher and has been actively involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, including bedside tutorials, lectures and MMED supervision. She was a member of the course development team that defined the core curriculum for the 4th year students and enjoys teaching the future generation of doctors.
Karen Dwyer, MBBS, PhD, FRACP, FASLM is a Professor of Medicine at Deakin University, Australia. Karen is a nephrologist and Clinical Director at Kidney Health Australia. Karen has a research interest in purinergic signalling in kidney health and disease. Her clinical (and clinical research) interests include diabetes related kidney disease, kidney disease in agricultural communities and managing metabolic health through a comprehensive lifestyle approach and innovative models of care to improve the management of chronic disease.
Dr. Anette Melk is a Professor of Pediatrics and Transplantation Medicine at Hannover Medical School. She is the director of the DFG-funded Young Academy - PRACTIS (PRogram of hAnnover medical school for Clinician scienTISts). Dr. Melk's work on pathways leading to impaired regeneration in the pathogenesis of renal and cardiovascular diseases includes basic findingsland concepts from cell and animal models to clinical applications. She has pioneered the idea that cellular senescence is crucial for the insufficient regenerative capacity of donor organs and an important target in therapeutic approaches. Dr. Melk's clinical research projects aim to further decipher factors leading to cardiovascular and renal comorbidity in transplant recipients. She initiated the largest longitudinal clinical study assessing cardiovascular health in children and adults after solid organ and stem cell transplantation. Dr. Melk's holistic view on optimization of patient and graft survival lead her build the first German research consortium dealing with sex and gender-related differences in renal transplantation.
Priya Pais MD, MSc is an Associate professor of Pediatric Nephrology in St John’s Medical College, Bangalore, India. Dr Priya is a member of the Outreach Committee of the International Pediatric Transplant Association (IPTA) and the Sister Renal Centre committee of IPNA. She has a keen interest in addressing the disparities in kidney failure care, including access to transplant in low resource settings. Dr Pais is the principle investigator of a multi-centre study of the costs and outcomes of pediatric CKD in 3 Low and low-middle income countries funded by the ISN Clinical research program. She is also an enthusiastic member of Women in Nephrology(WIN) and WIN-India.
Stefan G. Tullius, MD, PhD, FACS, Joseph E. Murray, MD Distinguished Chair in Transplant Surgery, is Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Transplant Surgery, and Director of the Transplant Surgery Research Lab at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston. He is an internationally recognized clinician/scientist with an NIH-funded laboratory, a frequent invited speaker, and Visiting Professor, who has published more than 300 scientific manuscripts and book chapters. Dr. Tullius has served as Sr. Treasurer for The Transplantation Society (TTS), is an Executive Editor, Transplantation, and is a Vice President of the Int’l Society of Uterus Transplantation. He has served on the Boards of the European Society of Organ Transplantation (ESOT), TTS, and UNOS; he currently is a Board member of the National Kidney Registry. Dr. Tullius has chaired and co-chaired several committees for the TTS, ESOT, and the American society of Transplantation (AST). His work has been recognized with several awards including the Clinical Science Investigator Award of the AST, the Excellence in Transplantation Award by the National Kidney Foundation, and the Outstanding Achievement Transplantation Science (Basic) Award by TTS.
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