Research
My long-term goal is to identify nonimmune and immune drivers of long-term kidney allograft failure. To this end, I have developed the human kidney transplant transcriptomic Atlas (HKTTA) at the University of Michigan that has been instrumental in providing healthy reference samples for the Human Cell Atlas project and the Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP). The HKTTA repository currently consists of >200 stored samples of various kidney transplant-related conditions for single-cell/single nuclear transcriptomic profiling, metabolic and proteomic analysis.

My current focus is on understanding the role of hyperfiltration on the glomerular architecture of kidney allografts using carefully conducted filtration fraction studies, tissue-based single-cell transcriptomic analysis, and urine transcriptomic analysis. This work is funded by an extramural K23 career development grant from the NIH (NIDDK) and intramural grants from the Michigan George O’Brien Kidney Center. In addition, I am actively involved in dissecting out the role of the innate and adaptive immune system in causing glomerular injury and progression and understanding mechanisms of viral-mediated kidney allograft injury.

Lastly, in my role as faculty at the Kidney Epidemiology and Cost Center (KECC) at the UM-School of Public Health, I am actively involved in developing practitioner-level metrics for access to kidney transplantation. I have also been a Co-Investigator on the Utilization of Data Indicators in the ESRD Survey Process contract since 2016 and have participated in developing revised OPO and transplant center performance metrics.