Top experts by indication / Nephrology
Most active experts in Chronic Kidney Disease
2026 edition, data as of October 26, 2026
638 key opinion leaders in the directory are tagged to Chronic Kidney Disease. The tables below rank them by one public measure each: registered trials, citations, NIH awards and congress contributions. Each is a count from a named source, not a judgment about the person, and every row links a profile where the count can be checked.
Most registered trials
Registered clinical trials in this indication on which the person is a listed investigator, counted from ClinicalTrials.gov. 140 of the 638 people tagged to this indication have this count on record; the 25 highest are listed. Source: ClinicalTrials.gov.
| # | Expert | trials |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Geoffrey BlockU.S. Renal Care, CO | 11 trials |
| 2 | Jing ChenUT Southwestern Medical Center, TX | 9 trials |
| 3 | Rajiv AgarwalIN | 8 trials |
| 4 | Rajiv AgarwalRichard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, TX | 8 trials |
| 5 | Navdeep TangriMA | 6 trials |
| 6 | Latonya HicksonFL | 5 trials |
| 7 | Srinivasan BeddhuHuntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, UT | 5 trials |
| 8 | Jeanie ParkGA | 4 trials |
| 9 | Sarah SchraubenPA | 4 trials |
| 10 | Baback RoshanravanUniversity of California, Davis, WA | 4 trials |
| 11 | Jonathan HimmelfarbIcahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY | 4 trials |
| 12 | Elaine KuUniversity of California, San Francisco, CA | 4 trials |
| 13 | Mark UnruhUniversity of New Mexico School of Medicine, NM | 4 trials |
| 14 | Thomas NickolasWashington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO | 4 trials |
| 15 | Kamyar Kalantar-ZadehCA | 3 trials |
| 16 | Paul DrawzUniversity of Minnesota, MN | 3 trials |
| 17 | Diana JalalUniversity of Iowa, IA | 3 trials |
| 18 | Matthias KretzlerUniversity of Michigan, MI | 3 trials |
| 19 | Jennifer FlytheUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC | 3 trials |
| 20 | Jessica KendrickUniversity of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, CO | 3 trials |
| 21 | Glenn ChertowStanford University School of Medicine, CA | 3 trials |
| 22 | Susan FurthChildren's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), PA | 3 trials |
| 23 | Linda FriedUniversity of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, PA | 3 trials |
| 24 | Sharon MoeIndiana University School of Medicine, IN | 3 trials |
| 25 | Orlando GutierrezUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), AL | 3 trials |
Most cited
Citations to the person's whole published record in OpenAlex, not only their work in this indication, among the people with at least two registered trials in it. 35 of the 638 people tagged to this indication have at least 2 registered trials in it and this count on record; the 25 highest are listed. Source: OpenAlex.
| # | Expert | citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Glenn ChertowStanford University School of Medicine, CA | 109,191 citations |
| 2 | Csaba KovesdyUniversity of Tennessee Health Science Center, VA | 71,251 citations |
| 3 | Jonathan HimmelfarbIcahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY | 49,202 citations |
| 4 | Matthias KretzlerUniversity of Michigan, MI | 48,281 citations |
| 5 | Rajiv AgarwalRichard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, TX | 45,260 citations |
| 6 | Sankar NavaneethanBaylor College of Medicine, OH | 44,855 citations |
| 7 | Susan FurthChildren's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), PA | 42,185 citations |
| 8 | Lynnette NiemanNational Institutes of Health, MD | 36,293 citations |
| 9 | Robert TotoUT Southwestern Medical Center, TX | 33,663 citations |
| 10 | David KandzariPiedmont Heart Institute, GA | 29,091 citations |
| 11 | Sharon MoeIndiana University School of Medicine, IN | 24,407 citations |
| 12 | Michel ChoncholUniversity of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, CO | 23,586 citations |
| 13 | Geoffrey BlockU.S. Renal Care, CO | 23,163 citations |
| 14 | David CharytanNYU Langone Health, NY | 22,973 citations |
| 15 | Orlando GutierrezUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), AL | 20,261 citations |
| 16 | Sylvia RosasJoslin Diabetes Center, MA | 17,655 citations |
| 17 | Jing ChenUT Southwestern Medical Center, TX | 17,224 citations |
| 18 | Mark UnruhUniversity of New Mexico School of Medicine, NM | 16,894 citations |
| 19 | Adriana HungVanderbilt University Medical Center, TN | 13,942 citations |
| 20 | Laura DemberUniversity of Pennsylvania, PA | 13,259 citations |
| 21 | Deidra CrewsJohns Hopkins University School of Medicine, MD | 12,259 citations |
| 22 | Srinivasan BeddhuHuntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, UT | 12,063 citations |
| 23 | Thomas NickolasWashington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO | 10,993 citations |
| 24 | Latonya HicksonFL | 8,441 citations |
| 25 | Jennifer FlytheUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC | 8,222 citations |
Most NIH awards
NIH awards on the person's record in NIH RePORTER, across all of their funded work, among the people with at least two registered trials in this indication. 34 of the 638 people tagged to this indication have at least 2 registered trials in it and this count on record; the 25 highest are listed. Source: NIH RePORTER.
| # | Expert | awards |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Robert TotoUT Southwestern Medical Center, TX | 22 awards |
| 2 | Sharon MoeIndiana University School of Medicine, IN | 15 awards |
| 3 | Kamyar Kalantar-ZadehCA | 14 awards |
| 4 | Matthias KretzlerUniversity of Michigan, MI | 14 awards |
| 5 | Orlando GutierrezUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), AL | 13 awards |
| 6 | Michel ChoncholUniversity of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, CO | 10 awards |
| 7 | Glenn ChertowStanford University School of Medicine, CA | 10 awards |
| 8 | Srinivasan BeddhuHuntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, UT | 10 awards |
| 9 | Jessica KendrickUniversity of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, CO | 9 awards |
| 10 | Elaine KuUniversity of California, San Francisco, CA | 9 awards |
| 11 | Jeanie ParkGA | 7 awards |
| 12 | Kalani RaphaelHuntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, UT | 7 awards |
| 13 | Rajiv AgarwalIN | 6 awards |
| 14 | Deidra CrewsJohns Hopkins University School of Medicine, MD | 6 awards |
| 15 | Kerri CavanaughVanderbilt University Medical Center, TN | 6 awards |
| 16 | Susan FurthChildren's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), PA | 6 awards |
| 17 | Laura DemberUniversity of Pennsylvania, PA | 6 awards |
| 18 | Sarah SchraubenPA | 5 awards |
| 19 | Jennifer FlytheUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC | 5 awards |
| 20 | Sylvia RosasJoslin Diabetes Center, MA | 5 awards |
| 21 | David CharytanNYU Langone Health, NY | 5 awards |
| 22 | Paul DrawzUniversity of Minnesota, MN | 4 awards |
| 23 | Adriana HungVanderbilt University Medical Center, TN | 4 awards |
| 24 | Ana RicardoUniversity of Illinois, IL | 4 awards |
| 25 | Latonya HicksonFL | 3 awards |
Most congress contributions
Congress abstracts and presentations attributed to the person and verified by DOI, across every meeting the directory tracks, among the people with at least two registered trials in this indication. 15 of the 638 people tagged to this indication have at least 2 registered trials in it and this count on record; the 15 highest are listed. Source: Congress abstracts, DOI-verified.
| # | Expert | contributions |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lynnette NiemanNational Institutes of Health, MD | 39 contributions |
| 2 | Matthias KretzlerUniversity of Michigan, MI | 10 contributions |
| 3 | Glenn ChertowStanford University School of Medicine, CA | 6 contributions |
| 4 | Robert TotoUT Southwestern Medical Center, TX | 6 contributions |
| 5 | Csaba KovesdyUniversity of Tennessee Health Science Center, VA | 4 contributions |
| 6 | David CharytanNYU Langone Health, NY | 4 contributions |
| 7 | Mark UnruhUniversity of New Mexico School of Medicine, NM | 3 contributions |
| 8 | Diana JalalUniversity of Iowa, IA | 2 contributions |
| 9 | Geoffrey BlockU.S. Renal Care, CO | 2 contributions |
| 10 | Kerri CavanaughVanderbilt University Medical Center, TN | 2 contributions |
| 11 | Orlando GutierrezUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), AL | 2 contributions |
| 12 | Jennifer FlytheUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC | 1 contribution |
| 13 | Ana RicardoUniversity of Illinois, IL | 1 contribution |
| 14 | Baback RoshanravanUniversity of California, Davis, WA | 1 contribution |
| 15 | Thomas NickolasWashington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO | 1 contribution |
Emerging
22 of the 638 carry the Emerging flag: publication and trial activity rising over the recent three years, in the top ten percent for growth among specialty peers at a similar career stage. Listed A to Z, not ranked; the flag is a yes or nothing, never a score. How the flag is computed.
| Dinesh ChatothFresenius Medical Care, GA |
| Vipul ChitaliaBoston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, MA |
| Seth FurgesonDenver Health Medical Center, CO |
| Nasrollah GhahramaniPennsylvania State University, PA |
| Koyal JainUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC |
| Jason KiddVirginia Commonwealth University, VA |
| Sheng KuoNew York Hospital Queens, NY |
| Dustin LeThomas Jefferson University, PA |
| Michael LipkowitzGeorgetown University, DC |
| Roy MarcusPA |
| Samer MohandesChildren's Hospital of Philadelphia, PA |
| Salim MujaisSumitomo Dainippon Pharma, IL |
| Subodh SaggiSUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, NY |
| Ankit SakhujaIcahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY |
| William SmoyerNationwide Children's Hospital, OH |
| Robert StarNational Institutes of Health, MD |
| Michelle StarrIndiana University Indianapolis, IN |
| Joseph VassalottiNational Kidney Foundation, NY |
| Kavitha VellankiLoyola University Medical Center, IL |
| Anuradha WadhwaLoyola University Medical Center, IL |
| Erica WinnickiUniversity of California, San Francisco, CA |
| Susan ZiolkowskiStanford University School of Medicine, CA |
How these tables are computed
The cohort is every profile in the directory tagged to Chronic Kidney Disease, from the person's registered trials and published research. Only indications with at least 200 tagged people get a page; a smaller cohort would say more about the tag than about the people in it. Each table sorts the cohort by one count, highest first, with no weighting, no blending and no editorial pass. Ties are broken by the profile's stable internal id so the same counts always give the same order. A person with no count on record is left out of that table, not ranked last.
Citations, NIH awards and congress contributions are counts over a person's whole record, not their work in this indication alone, so those three tables are limited to the indication's investigators: people with at least 2 registered trials in it. Without that rule the most cited people in a cohort are the ones whose careers span many diseases, which is a fact about their careers, not about this field. The registered-trials table is the indication-scoped count itself and has no such limit.
The counts are recomputed on every publish and the page carries the date of the publish it was built from. Previous editions are superseded, not archived.
What is deliberately absent
Reported industry payments are on every profile but are not a table here: a count of payers is a fact, and ranking people by it reads as a judgment. Prescribing volume is part of the paid workspace. The directory's influence tier is a judgment and never orders a public page. Sources and methodology.
Filter, sort and open every Chronic Kidney Disease profile in the directory