Clinical and Translational Research

Dr. Bender's Research

Dr. Bender is an Associate Professor of Medicine, in the clinician educator tract. Dr. Bender serves as the primary investigator for the PD registry at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Fried's Research
Dr. Fried’s research has concentrated in two areas: The association of decreased kidney function with adverse outcomes in older individuals, including cardiovascular disease, functional decline and change in body composition. Her other research interest is progression of kidney disease, in particular diabetic nephropathy. She chaired, VA NEPHRON D, a VA sponsored multi-center study on combination ACEI/ARB on progression of diabetic nephropathy. I am currently chair of the Steering Committee for the NIDDK CKD Pilot Study consortium.
Dr. Hariharan's Research
Dr. Hariharan’s scientific contributions cover variety of important renal transplant topics. They are: Recurrent and De novo Diseases after renal transplantation, Long-term Kidney Transplant Survival, Surrogate Markers for Renal Transplant Outcome and BKV infection after Renal Transplantation. Recently he has been focusing on identification, pathogenesis and treatment of sub-clinical acute T cell rejection in renal transplant recipients. His goal is to identify and treat sub-clinical rejection and improve long-term allograft survival.
Dr. Hotchkiss' Research
Dr. Jhamb's Research
Dr. Jhamb’s clinical research focuses on understanding and improving patient-centered outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease and end stage renal disease. She is particularly interested in testing the effectiveness of clinical interventions to improve fatigue and sleep disorders in these patients. Her ongoing study is evaluating the effect of intensive blood pressure control on sleep apnea in dialysis patients. Another focus of her research is using health information technology to improve delivery of CKD care, reduce health disparities in CKD and develop predicting modeling to identify high risk CKD patients.
Dr. Mehta's Research
Dr. Mehta’s main interests revolve around the various clinical and translational aspects of Clinical and Sub-clinical Acute Rejection and its long-term impact on renal allograft function. He is also interested in epidemiology and biostatistics and is pursuing his interest at the Institute of Clinical Research and Epidemiology affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Palevsky's Research
Dr. Paul M. Palevsky is Professor of Medicine in the Renal-Electrolyte Division and Chief of the Renal Section at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. Dr. Palevsky’s main research interests focus on the prevention and treatment of acute kidney injury and the management of renal replacement therapy in acute and chronic kidney disease. Other areas of research include progression of CKD, management of symptoms in patients with CKD and ESRD and implementation of quality improvement in CKD and ESRD. He deputy editor of CJASN, the Renal Failure editor for UpToDate and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine, and Blood Purification.
Dr. Puttarajappa's Research
Dr. Puttarajappa’s research interests include pre transplant assessment of kidney transplant candidates, particularly in the area of cardiovascular risk and functional status assessment. His other areas of interest are Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections in the kidney transplant recipients and renal issues in non-renal solid abdominal organ transplantation. He has completed a Certificate course in Clinical Research at the Institute for Clinical Research Education (ICRE), University of Pittsburgh. He co-directs the continuous renal replacement therapy didactic course provided annually to the renal and critical care medicine fellows. He is also the co-facilitator for the renal fellow’s bimonthly journal club series.
Dr. Sood's Research
Dr. Sood’s clinical and research interests include living kidney donation, antibody mediated rejection and waitlist management. He has been involved in multiple studies in their plan, conduct and data analysis as well as publication of the study results. Dr. Sood is also the center PI for two industry sponsored multicentric translational studies. He also collaborates with the school of pharmacy to study drug disposition after kidney transplantation and in living donors.
Dr. Weisbord's Research
Dr. Steven Weisbord is an Professor of Medicine and Clinical and Translational Science in the Renal-Electrolyte Division at the University of Pittsburgh and a Staff Nephrologist at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. He is also a Core Investigator at the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. His main research interests include processes of care related to acute kidney injury and quality of life and symptom burden in maintenance hemodialysis patients. He is the Principal Investigator and Study Chairman of the ‘PRESERVE’ study, a VA Cooperative Studies Program sponsored multicenter, randomized clinical trial investigating interventions for the prevention of serious adverse outcomes related to contrast-induced acute kidney injury. He is a Principal Investigator of an NIH funded study establishing a biorepository of blood and urine samples collected from PRESERVE trial participants. He was also the Principal Investigator of the SMILE study, a multicenter clinical trial that compared two strategies for the management of symptoms in patients receiving chronic hemodialysis.
Dr. Wu's Research
Dr. Wu’s clinical and research interests lie in the selection of kidney transplant recipients and wait list management, kidney transplantation in the elderly, and the impact of co-morbidity on transplant outcomes.
Division of Renal-Electrolyte Academic Offices

A919 Scaife Hall
3550 Terrace Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15261
(412) 647-3118