Division News

David Ortiz-Melo, MD, assistant professor of medicine (Nephrology), has been appointed as an associate chair of the Department of Medicine Minority Recruitment and Retention Committee.

Rasheeda Hall, MD, MBA, MHS, assistant professor of medicine (Nephrology), is drawn to complexity. When she was a resident at Duke, she says, “I felt a heart tug to nephrology because these patients were sicker and more complex patients.”

Today, after completing a fellowship in Nephrology at Duke, she is a geriatric nephrologist, with the goal of making life simpler and better for these patients. She is using tools from geriatrics and pharmacology in her quest to improve quality of life and address patient goals of care. Dr. Hall hopes some of her work eventually will help inform geriatric nephrology on a larger scale.

Congratulations to the following Department of Medicine faculty who received promotions in the first half of 2018.

Joseph Rogers, MD, interim chair of the Department of Medicine, has notified four Medicine faculty that they will receive funding under the new Chair’s Pilot Project Grants in Health Data Science.

Xunrong Luo, MD, PhD, Margaret Gray Morton Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University, will join the Duke Division of Nephrology on September 1, 2018. Dr. Luo, a kidney transplant expert, will serve as director of translational research for the Duke Transplant Center.

The recipients of the Department of Medicine faculty Excellence in Education Awards have been announced.

​Myles Wolf, MD, M.Med.Sc., professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Nephrology, was one of five faculty in the School of Medicine to be awarded a distinguished professorship.

Two Department of Medicine faculty members have been selected to receive 2018 Physician-Scientist “Strong Start” awards.

The School of Medicine created the awards program in 2016, funded with a gift from the Duke Endowment, to support promising, new physician-scientists at Duke as they develop independent research programs.  Each recipient will receive $70,000 annually for three years to support their research programs. Five awards were funded this cycle.

Gentzon Hall, MD, PhD, will present his research at the Department's Research Seminar Series on Friday, March 30, 2018 in Duke Hospital Room 2002.

Chronic kidney disease takes a dreadful toll. Some 13 percent of adult Americans live with the condition. Despite that high prevalence, multitudes of mysteries persist about how chronic kidney disease progresses and how to stop or slow it.

Julia Scialla, MD, MHS, is eager to help change that with studies exploring the physiology of chronic kidney disease complications.