People
The people behind the data
Physicians, geneticists, computational biologists and engineers, 19 of them at last count, working in one laboratory on the Penn Medicine campus in Philadelphia. We come from many countries and many disciplines, and we think that is exactly what a hard problem needs.
Katalin Susztak, MD, PhD
Principal investigator
Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases; Professor of Medicine and Genetics; Director of the Penn/CHOP Kidney Innovation Center.
Katalin Susztak is a physician-scientist whose laboratory has shaped how the field understands the genetics and cell biology of chronic kidney disease. She is the Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases and Professor of Medicine and Genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, Professor of Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Co-Director of the Penn/CHOP Kidney Innovation Center and Director of the Diabetic Kidney Disease Program of Penn's Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.
Full biography →Instructors 2
Samer Mohandes, MD
Instructor
Molecular mechanisms of chronic and diabetic kidney disease; alternative splicing in the human kidney.
Jonathan Levinsohn, MD, PhD
Instructor
Early kidney development and how developmental programmes shape later disease susceptibility.
Postdoctoral fellows 10
Shen Li, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Functional characterisation of causative genes in cardio-renal metabolism.
Yanjuan Hou, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Adaptive and maladaptive repair in chronic kidney disease.
Bernhard Dumoulin, MD
Postdoctoral fellow
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics of immune cell states and immune mechanisms in kidney disease.
Chenyu Li, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
NephroBase and AI-enabled multi-omic integration in kidney disease.
Chunxiu Du, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Lipid metabolism and epigenetics of chronic kidney disease.
Siyu Pan, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Single-cell omics with genetic and QTL analyses to define cell-type-specific mechanisms of kidney disease.
Chaelin Kang, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Cytosolic nucleotide sensors and immune cells in kidney fibrosis.
Jayanthan K. Sankaranarayanan, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Vision-transformer architectures for computational renal pathology.
Shinya Taguchi, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Mechanisms of cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic disease.
Debmalya Ghosh, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow
Deep learning on large-scale multimodal biomedical data to understand kidney disease progression.
Visiting scholars 1
Jie Guan, MD, PhD
Visiting scholar
Cellular and molecular mechanisms of chronic kidney disease.
PhD students 2
Matthew Wun, DVM
PhD student
Shuyang Bian
MD/PhD student
Spatial and molecular variation in genetically mediated glomerular diseases.
Research specialists 2
Matthew Choi, BS
Research specialist
Spatial transcriptomics and imaging workflows, whole-slide image processing, and laboratory operations.
Niall Hosein, MS, BA
Research specialist
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics of human kidney development.
Programmer 1
Yitian Ma, MS
Programmer
Software and data engineering for the laboratory's databases, web resources and analysis pipelines.
Clinical research 1
Mohammed N. Aldulaimee, BS
Clinical research coordinator
Coordinates the TRIDENT longitudinal cohort: enrolment, sample collection, data tracking and regulatory oversight.
Alumni 46
Since 2005 more than forty scientists have trained in the laboratory, in New York and in Philadelphia, and many now lead laboratories and clinical divisions of their own. Former members who would like their entry updated are welcome to write to us.
- Amanda Raff, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2001–2005Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
- Robert Woroniecki, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2002–2004Professor, Stony Brook University
- Davoud Mohtat, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2002–2005Professor, Georgetown University
- Johan Lorenzen, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2005–2006Professor and Vice Chief, St. Josefs-Hospital, Cloppenburg
- Mariana Murea, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2006–2008Associate Professor, Wake Forest University
- Pinelopi Kapitsinou, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2006–2008Associate Professor, Northwestern University
- Laura Malaga, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2007–2010Professor and Chief of Pediatric Nephrology, New York University
- Bernhard Bielesz, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2007–2010Professor, Medical University of Vienna
- Kimberly Reidy, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2008–2014Professor and Chief of Pediatric Nephrology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
- Karolina Woroniecka, MD, PhDUndergraduate researcher, 2008–2011Assistant Professor of Pathology, Duke University
- Hideki Kato, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2009–2011Assistant Professor, University of Tokyo
- Jianling Tao, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2011–2015Instructor, Stanford University
- Hyun Mi Kang, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2011–2015Staff Scientist, Korea Institute of Biomedical Studies
- Yi-An Ko, PhDPhD student, 2011–2017
- Nora Ledo, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2012–2014Assistant Professor, Semmelweis University
- Mariya Sweetwyne, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2012–2015Assistant Professor, University of Washington
- Pazit Beckerman, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2013–2016Professor and Chair of Medicine, Sheba Medical Center, Israel
- Seung Hyuk Han, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2013–2015Professor, Yonsei University
- Szu-Yuan Li, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2013–2017Professor, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
- Caroline Gluck, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2014–2018Assistant Professor, Nemours Children's Hospital
- Jihwan Park, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2014–2018Assistant Professor, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology
- Poonam Dhillon, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2014–2018Research Scientist, GSK
- Chengxiang Qiu, PhDResearch trainee, 2014–2017Graduate studies, University of Washington
- Rojesh Shrestha, PhDResearch trainee, 2015–2017Graduate studies, Harvard Medical School
- Yuting Guan, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2016–2020Assistant Professor, Southern Medical University
- Junnan Wu, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2018–2021Professor and Chief of Nephrology, Zhejiang University
- Xin Sheng, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2018–2022Assistant Professor, Zhejiang University
- Kiwung Chung, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2018–2020Assistant Professor, Pusan National University
- Hailong Hu, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2018–2022Staff Scientist, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
- Michael S. Balzer, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2018–2023Assistant Professor, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
- Hongbo Liu, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2018–2024Assistant Professor, University of Rochester
- Ziyuan MaResearch trainee, 2018–2020Graduate studies, Rutgers University
- Katie Sullivan, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2019–2022Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin
- Ya-Wen Yang, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2019–2021Assistant Professor, National Taiwan University
- Tamas Aranyi, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2019–2021Assistant Professor, Semmelweis University
- Tomohito Doke, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2019–2023Assistant Professor, Nagoya University
- Xiujie Liang, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2020–2025Assistant Professor, Sun Yat-sen University
- Dhanunjay Mukhi, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2020–2025Project Scientist, Boehringer Ingelheim
- Bibek Poudel, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2021–2023Staff Scientist, Labcorp
- Amin Abedini, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2021–2023Resident in Medicine, University of Maryland
- Daigoro Hirohama, MD, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2021–2024Assistant Professor, Chiba University
- Konstantin A. Klötzer, MD, PhDVisiting researcher, 2022–2023Medical University of Graz
- Eunji Ha, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2023–2025Assistant Professor, Seoul National University
- Fang Li, MDPostdoctoral fellow, 2023–2025Assistant Professor, Fudan University
- Magaiver Andrade-Silva, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2023–2025Assistant Professor, University of São Paulo
- Minyan (Jessie) Zhu, PhDPostdoctoral fellow, 2023–2026Indiana University
Join us
Come and work on kidney disease with us.
We are always looking for curious people. The laboratory welcomes postdoctoral fellows, clinical fellows, graduate students and research specialists with an interest in human genetics, single-cell and spatial genomics, computational biology, machine learning or translational kidney biology, and we value clinicians and computational scientists equally. Send a CV and a short statement of what you would like to work on to Dr. Susztak; we read every application.
Write to Dr. Susztak