Kidney Week

Deidra C. Crews, MD, ScM, FASN, is Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine, where she also serves as Associate Director for Faculty Development in the Division of Nephrology as well as Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. Dr. Crews has served ASN and the kidney community extensively. Among her many appointments, she was a member of the NKF-ASN Task Force on Reassessing the Inclusion of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Diseases, a member of the Kidney Week Education Committee (which she co-chaired in 2021), and a member of the Continuous Professional Development Committee. She was previously a member of the Chronic Kidney Disease Comprehensive Care Model Task Force, chair of the Chronic Kidney Disease Advisory Group, and chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

Hall-of-Fame basketball player and kidney transplant recipient Alonzo Mourning will receive an ASN President's Medal during the opening plenary on Thursday, October 24, in recognition of his work in raising awareness about kidney diseases, as well as raising funds for kidney research and social justice programs. ASN presents this medal to individuals who have advanced the association's mission to fight against kidney diseases by educating health professionals, sharing new knowledge, advancing research, and advocating for patients.

David Rhew is Microsoft's Global Chief Medical Officer & VP of Healthcare. He has served as Microsoft's International Coordinator for the Pandemic Response, where he worked with WHO to develop their World Health Data Hub, CDC to standup their vaccine data lake, and US states to roll-out COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Rhew has served as CMO and VP for Samsung and SVP and CMO at Zynx Health. He has served on National Quality Forum's Executive CSAC Board and chaired the Consumer Technology Association's Health Technology Board. He currently sits on AdvaMed s Digital Health Board and the Governing Committee for NESTcc, the medical device advisory group for FDA, CMS, and NIH.

Hiddo L Heerspink is a Professor of Clinical Trials and Personalised Medicine, and a clinical pharmacologist/trialist in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology at the University Medical Center Groningen. He studied Pharmacology at the University of Groningen, where he subsequently received his PhD. Professor Heerspink is a visiting professor at the University of New South Wales in and The George Institute for Global Health in Sydney, Australia where he leads a global registry of patients with chronic kidney disease to establish a global infrastructure to facilitate rapid and increased access to trials for patients with kidney disease. Professor Heerspink's research interests focus on optimising current treatment strategies, and finding new therapeutic approaches to halt the progression of renal and cardiovascular diseases in patients with diabetes and/or chronic kidney disease. He participates and leads numerous clinical trials focused on kidney and cardiovascular complications due to chronic kidney disease or diabetes. His main expertise includes clinical trial design and conducted, biomarkers, and methodological and innovative aspects and statistical analyses of clinical trials.

Sekar Kathiresan is co-founder and CEO of Verve Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new approach to the care of cardiovascular disease, transforming treatment from chronic management to single-course gene editing medicines. He is a cardiologist and scientist who has focused his career on understanding the inherited basis for heart attack and leveraging those insights to improve the care of cardiovascular disease. Based on his groundbreaking discoveries in human genetic mutations that confer resistance to cardiovascular disease, he co-founded Verve Therapeutics with a vision to create a pipeline of single-course, gene editing therapies focused on addressing the root causes of this highly prevalent and life-threatening disease. Today, Verve is advancing two initial programs that target PCSK9 and ANGPTL3, respectively genes that have been extensively validated by Dr. Kathiresan and others as targets for lowering blood lipids, such as low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which is a major driver of cardiovascular disease.

Joseph V. Bonventre, MD, PhD is the Samuel A. Levine Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Constantine L. Hampers Distinguished Chair in Renal Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT. He is Chief of the Division of Renal Medicine of the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and also founding Chief of the Division of Engineering in Medicine at the BWH. He is former Director of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His studies kidney injury, adaptive and maladaptive repair and kidney regeneration, and includes inflammation, senescence, biomarkers, stem cells and kidney organoids. Bonventre has authored more than 420 original publications and 160 invited chapters and reviews, has received two MERIT awards from the NIH-NIDDK, and his work has been cited more than 94,000 times with an h-index of 153. He has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the 4th most cited investigator in kidney and hypertension. Dr. Bonventre is Editor of Seminars in Nephrology, Osler Medal Awardee of the Royal Society of Physicians and Bywaters Awardee of the ISN, has a BS with distinction (Engineering Physics) from Cornell, an M.D. and Ph.D. (Biophysics) from Harvard, and Honorary doctorate degrees from Mt. Saint Mary's College and the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology. He is past ASN Councilor and President and past ISN Councilor. He has served on the NIDDK Advisory Council.

Melissa Little, AC, BSc (Hons I), PhD, GAICD, FAAHMS, FAAS, is CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW), Chief Scientist at the Murdoch Children s Research Institute, and leader of the Kidney Regeneration Laboratory, Melbourne. She is the Immediate Past President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research and holds an honorary position as Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, University of Melbourne. Professor Little is a Companion of the Order of Australia, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Danish Royal Academy of Science and Letters. She is on the editorial board of the Cell Stem Cell, Nature Reviews Nephrology, Development and Kidney International. She has previously held the role of President of the Australasian Society for Stem Cell Research, Program Leader of Stem Cells Australia, and the Chief Scientific Officer of the Australian Stem Cell Centre.

Michael DeBaun is a Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, Vice-Chair of Clinical and Translational Research for the Department of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and the Director of the Vanderbilt-Meharry Center of Excellence in Sickle Cell Disease. Before arriving at Vanderbilt in 2010, he was a Professor of Pediatrics, Neurology, and Biostatistics at Washington University School of Medicine. In recognition of his contributions to advancing the field of sickle cell disease, Dr. DeBaun was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2009. He also received the 2014 Ernest Beutler Prize and Lecture in Clinical Science from the American Society of Hematology and the Stanford University Medical School Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. He was elected to be president of the American Pediatric Society, founded in 1888; the APS is the first and most prestigious academic pediatric organization in North America.