Colleagues, it is my pleasure to announce that Dr. Leslie Stuart Gewin has been named the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Renal Diseases in the Department of Medicine.
Dr. Gewin is an outstanding physician scientist, clinician and educator who is nationally recognized for her many contributions in academic Nephrology. Dr. Gewin earned her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and MD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine (graduating magna cum laude). She did her residency in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins and a fellowship in Nephrology at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Gewin was appointed as a faculty member at Vanderbilt University in 2009. We were very fortunate to recruit Dr Gewin to WashU Medicine in 2021 where she has continued to excel as a physician scientist.
Dr. Gewin’s successful research program has elucidated novel mechanisms of kidney tubule injury and repair that improve our understanding of the pathogenesis of chronic kidney disease (CKD), a condition afflicting 850 million people worldwide. Her early work focused on growth factors (e.g. TGF-beta, Wnt/beta-catenin) and provided valuable pre-clinical data explaining the surprisingly negative clinical studies targeting TGF-beta in diabetic nephropathy. Kidney tubules are highly metabolically active, and Dr. Gewin is using cutting-edge technologies to define which metabolic changes are adaptive versus maladaptive in acute and chronic kidney injury. Reflecting her expertise in kidney metabolism, Dr. Gewin is Director of the Metabolism Core as part of the WashU Nephrology Division’s O’Brien Center grant. This multidisciplinary NIH-funded Core helps facilitate metabolic studies in the context of CKD. Dr. Gewin has an outstanding track record of funding including currently serving as PI on both an NIDDK-funded R01 and a Veterans Administration Merit Review. For her research accomplishments, she was awarded the VA St. Louis Research Investigator of the Year in 2025.
Dr. Gewin has a distinguished record of leadership in the academic and medical community. She serves as Secretary/Treasurer for the Southern Society of Clinical Investigation (SSCI) and has been Chair of the KCVD Scientific and Clinical Education Lifelong Learning Committee of the American Heart Association. She has held important roles at the American Society of Nephrology (ASN), including Associate Editor of the ASN-sponsored Kidney360, ASN Selection Committee for Lifetime Achievement Awards and the ASN/AHA Young Investigator Award, ASN’s AKINow Basic Science Workgroup, and ASN’s Kidney Week Education Committee. She has reviewed grants on study section for NIH, VA, Department of Defense, and is currently Co-chair of ASN’s Grant Review Committee.
Dr. Gewin is a wonderful role model and mentor for the next generation of physician scientists. She was previously Research Liaison within the Nephrology Division at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) to facilitate the successful promotion of tenure-track investigators. She is the founding chair of SSCI’s Tinsley Harrison Scholars initiative, a competitive program that supports early career physician scientists with networking and career development programming at SSCI’s annual meeting. Dr. Gewin served as Chair for Women on Track, a partnership with Faculty Affairs at VUMC that facilitated successful promotion of investigators, and was an elected Councilor for Women in Nephrology, an international group that promotes professional development for women and men in Nephrology. Dr. Leslie Gewin is an accomplished physician scientist, leader, and an outstanding recipient for the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professorship of Renal Diseases.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Gewin on this honor.