KUH-Advanced Research Training Program
NIH/NIDDK U2C DK129496 & TL1 DK132768
Program Directors
Isidro Salusky, MD
Tomas Ganz, MD, PhD
Stephen Freedland, MD
Training Core Directors
Elizabeta Nemeth, MD, PhD
Ananth Karumanchi, MD, PhD
Professional Development Core
Suzanne Nicholas, MD, PhD
Keith Norris, MD, PhD
Networking Core
Alex Bui, PhD
Suzanne Nicholas, MD, PhD
Our NIH-funded Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Advanced Research Training (KUH-ART) program is a comprehensive Los Angeles metropolitan area-based interdisciplinary graduate and postgraduate training program to prepare trainees for long-term productive careers in high-impact research in benign nephrology, urology and hematology. KUH-ART offers a personalized guidance program, matching interested trainees with research mentors and labs and provides easy-to-access general mentoring support and trainee advocacy; career guidance and general research career skills through partnerships with existing programs throughout Los Angeles County; as well as trainee exposure to the array of available research careers from academia to biotechnology and pharma.
Types of training. Pre- and postdoctoral opportunities. Predoctoral training is presently limited to the UCLA campus and draws namely from UCLA DGSOM, HSSEAS, FSPH, and the College Life Sciences Division. Postdoctoral fellowships are open throughout the KUH-ART network of participant sites.
KUH-ART outcomes by the numbers. Additional general information on UCLA PhD programs can be found at our institution's Graduate Program Statistics, and for postdocs, through the Postdoctoral Dashboard.
Since 2022 (past and current)
Pursuing biomedical and/or data science research
Current Trainees
Kristina Bergersen, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Molecular Immunology
UCLA
Matthew Bernard
PhD student
Cellular & Molecular Biology
UCLA
Tyler Marie Deveau
PhD student
IMMP
UCLA
Darren Fang
PhD student
Bioengineering
UCLA
Alex Hernandez-Tirado, MD
Postdoctoral fellow
Clinical Research
Cedars Sinai Medical Center
Gabriel Karin
PhD student
Molecular & Medical Pharmacology
UCLA
Deborah Kupferwasser, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Health Services
Lundquist Institute
Lucila Lee
PhD student
MCIP
UCLA
Shaina Rosenblum, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Medicine
UCLA
Example KUH-ART projects | Past & Present
Our trainees work on a range of basic science and translational research across kidney, urinary, and hematology domains. A sampling of recent projects is shown below.
Continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) is a form of dialysis prescribed to severely ill patients who cannot tolerate regular hemodialysis. However, as the patients are typically very ill to begin with, there is always uncertainty whether they will survive during or after CRRT treatment. Because of outcome uncertainty, a large percentage of patients treated with CRRT do not survive, utilizing scarce resources and raising false hope in patients and their families. There is potential for predictive machine learning models to assist clinicians in alleviating the uncertainty of CRRT patient survival outcomes, with opportunities for future improvement through further data collection and advanced modeling.
Publications:
- Zamanzadeh D, Feng J, Petousis P, Vepa A, Sarrafzadeh M, Karumanchi SA, Bui AAT, Kurtz I. Data-driven prediction of continuous renal replacement therapy survival. Nat Commun. 2024 Jun 27;15(1):5440. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49763-3. PMID: 38937447; PMCID: PMC11211317.
Past Trainees
Our trainees go on to research positions in industry and academia. Several have joined biomedical startup companies, while others are continuing postdoctoral fellowships and medical training at other institutions.
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Michie Adjei, MD (General Surgery Residency, Cedars-Sinai) -
Preston Crowell, PhD (Scientist, Stemson Therapeutics) -
Percy Daniels, MD (Urology Residency, University of Louisville) -
Kevyn Hart, PhD (Postdoctoral fellow, UCLA) -
Meagan Jenkins, PhD (Clinical & Public Health Fellow, Johns Hopkins) -
Michael Mellody, PhD (Senior Technology Fellow, UCLA TDG) -
Neema Pithia, MD (Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship, UCLA) -
Daniel Srole, PhD (Postdoc, Vertex Pharmaceuticals) -
Davina Zamanzadeh, PhD (Research Engineer, Cloudfare)