ATLANTIS Leadership

Susan M. Wall, MD
Professor of Medicine
Renal Division
Emory University

ATLANTIS Director, Administrative Core

Nael A. McCarty, PhD
Marcus Professor of Cystic Fibrosis
PACS Division, Department of Pediatrics
Director of Emory's Children's Cystic Fibrosis Center of Excellence
Emory University

ATLANTIS Director, Training Core

Vivien Sheehan, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Pediatrics
Director of Translational Sickle Cell Development Research
Emory University

ATLANTIS Associate Director, Training Core

Lou Ann Brown, PhD
Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
Assistant Dean, Emory University School of Medicine
Director, Emory Office of Postdoctoral Education

ATLANTIS Director, Professional Development Core 

Douglas C. Eaton, PhD
Professor of Medicine, Renal Division
Emory University

ATLANTIS Associate Director, Professional Development and Training Cores

Stacy S. Heilman, PhD
Associate Professor
Associate Vice Chair for Research
Emory Department of Pediatrics and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

ATLANTIS Director, Network Core

Jason Cobb, MD
Associate Professor, Renal Division
Associate Director, Nephrology Fellowship Training Program
Emory University 

ATLANTIS Associate Director, Network Core

Melissa Kemp, Ph.D.
Carol Ann & David D. Flanagan Professor
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering 
Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University

ATLANTIS Site PI,  Georgia Institute of Technology

Gianluca Tosini, PhD, FARVO
Professor and Chair
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Chief Scientific Research Officer
Morehouse School of Medicine

ATLANTIS Site PI, Morehouse School of Medicine

Michael J. Ross, MD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

_{Dr. Michael Ross earned his MD from NYU in 1995. He completed his internal medicine training at Duke University, followed by a nephrology fellowship at Mount Sinai, which he finished in 2001. Dr. Ross joined the faculty in the Division of Nephrology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2001 and served as the Nephrology Fellowship Program Director from 2004 to 2015. He assumed the role of Chief of Nephrology at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center from 2014 to 2017, during which he played a key role in establishing the only VA Kidney Transplant Program in the northeastern US. In 2017, Dr. Ross became the Chief of the Division of Nephrology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, where he currently holds the position of Chief of Nephrology and Professor of Medicine and Developmental and Molecular Biology.}

_{Dr. Ross has held several national/international leadership positions, including Chair of the ASN Fellowship Match Taskforce and Deputy Editor of Kidney International from 2012 to 2017. He currently serves as the Nephrology Section Editor of the American College of Physicians Medical Knowledge and Self-Assessment Program (MKSAP). Additionally, Dr. Ross recently assumed the role of contact PI for the NIH-funded New York Consortium for Interdisciplinary Training in Kidney, Urological, & Hematological Research. His primary research focus is to identify novel pathomechanisms of HIV-induced kidney diseases and other forms of kidney injury. He is also actively involved in clinical and translational research studies in kidney disease.}

Gregory E. Tasian, MD, MSc, MSCE, University of Pennsylvania

_{Dr. Tasian holds a tenured position as Associate Professor of Surgery and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. His research is centered at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where he practices as a pediatric urologist specializing in the surgical and medical management of children with kidney stone disease. Dr. Tasian obtained his M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, an MSc in Neuroscience from the University of Oxford, and an MS in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his urology residency at UCSF and a pediatric urology fellowship at CHOP.}

_{The primary focus of Greg’s career is to generate and apply knowledge to improve health outcomes of individuals with kidney stone disease. His research group employs a combination of clinical trials, prospective observational studies, and large data analytics to identify determinants of and optimal management strategies for kidney stones throughout life. Initially, his group discovered the association between antibiotics and kidney stone disease. Subsequently, they elucidated the causal pathway of nephrolithiasis by identifying perturbations in the gut microbiome and metabolome among individuals with early-onset calcium oxalate kidney stone disease, particularly noting a lower abundance of oxalate-degrading and butyrate-producing bacteria. He serves as the Director of the 30-site PCORI-funded Pediatric KIDney Stone (PKIDS) Care Improvement Network, a multi-PI in the Urinary Stone Disease Research Network (USDRN), and Director of the Center for Outcomes Research in Surgery (CORES) at CHOP.}

_{Dr. Tasian's research program has received continuous support from the NIH and PCORI since completing his fellowship, and he has published over 100 research articles in leading peer-reviewed journals. His research has garnered extensive media coverage, including features in The New York Times, NBC News, The Guardian, and CNN.}

 James Zimring, MD, PhD, University of Virginia

_{Dr. Zimring holds a Ph.D. in immunology and an M.D., both obtained from Emory University. He is board-certified in Clinical Pathology, a diplomate of the American Board of Pathology, and an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. Dr. Zimring has previously held professorships at Emory University and the University of Washington. Currently, he occupies the Thomas W. Tillack chair in experimental pathology at the University of Virginia. For over 20 years, Dr. Zimring has maintained an NIH-funded laboratory, publishing over 185 research articles, and focusing his research on transfusion medicine and blood-related diseases. He also teaches graduate-level coursework in critical thinking in the practice of science and has authored two books: "What Science Is and How It Really Works" (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and "Partial Truths: How Fractions Distort Our Thinking" (Columbia University Press, 2022).}