Under new leadership and consistent with its mission for growth and development, the Division of Pediatric Nephrology plans to start an ACGME-accredited fellowship program in 2013. The goal of the fellowship program is to train pediatric nephrologists to achieve high competence in patient care, renal research, and education.

The program will offer a rich educational environment and resources to ensure successful completion of the training. Both hands-on learning and didactic teaching will be emphasized. A rigorous curriculum has been constructed for fellows to learn to diagnose and to treat children with a wide spectrum of acute and chronic kidney diseases. The fellows will be fully engaged in inpatient and outpatient services, consultations, dialysis, and renal transplantation. In addition, rotations through Pediatric Urology, Pediatric Radiology, Pathology, and the Center for Glomerular Diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine at Columbia University will be integrated into the curriculum. The unique opportunity of working with world-renowned nephrologists with expertise in glomerular diseases will have significant impact on the education and the future careers of our trainees.

The fellows will have access to many outstanding basic and clinical researchers on the Columbia campus for guidance in choosing areas of research interest. Protected research time will be provided with the ultimate goal of transitioning fruitful results into future independent research. Some of the specific areas of laboratory and clinical researches include acute kidney injury; kidney and genitourinary tract development; glomerular diseases; transplant immunology; Genetics; and studies in renal biomarkers and new treatments for acute and chronic kidney disease. Fellows will be assigned a research mentor. An oversight committee will be formed to monitor progress in completing a specific research project. Didactic lectures will be provided for learning how to prepare manuscripts and write grant applications.

The new Pediatric Nephrology Fellowship Program at Columbia University will not only incorporate current training standards, but will also provide state-of-the art patient care and research to enrich our fellows’ training experience.