
Clinical Scientist in Nephrology program
The American Kidney Fund is committed to improving kidney care through clinical research. Jumpstart your career in academic nephrology and help advance prevention and outcomes research through our Clinical Scientist in Nephrology fellowship.
The 2026-2027 Clinical Scientist in Nephrology (CSN) Fellowship Application is now available. The deadline for applications is January 5, 2026.

Program overview
For over 30 years, the American Kidney Fund Clinical Scientist in Nephrology (CSN) fellowship program has funded researchers whose work is designed to improve diagnosis, treatment and outcomes for patients living with chronic kidney disease and has promoted clinical research in nephrology. Our CSN fellows conduct prevention and outcomes research while receiving advanced training in areas related to the AKF vision.
The CSN program has trained some of nephrology's brightest scholars who have gone on to become leaders in the field and mentors to new generations of scientists studying kidney disease. Many former CSN fellows have conducted groundbreaking research that advances knowledge and treatment of kidney disease.
Application details
The 2026-2027 Clinical Scientist in Nephrology (CSN) Fellowship Application is now available. The deadline for applications is January 5, 2026.
Meet our 2025 CSN fellows

Dr. Momen Abbasi
Dr. Abbasi is a nephrology fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Jordan and completed his residency and nephrology fellowship at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. He is currently pursuing an additional nephrology fellowship at UIC.
Dr. Abbasi is working on developing and testing non-invasive ways to assess kidney damage using advanced imaging techniques so that patients who are at a higher risk of worsening kidney function can be identified.
Dr. Abbasi's research will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze imaging data from kidney Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans in people with kidney disease. In doing so, he hopes to identify specific patterns in kidney disease that can help predict which patients are at higher risk of worsening kidney function. This could aid in developing new treatments and potentially provide a safer alternative to kidney biopsies, which pose significant bleeding risks.
I am honored to receive the AKF fellowship and grateful for their support. While imaging has transformed risk assessment, disease surveillance, and drug development in many fields of medicine, the potential in nephrology remains underexplored. Through this project, I aim to leverage machine learning approaches to analyze kidney functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) to develop imaging sub-phenotypes of kidney health. I hope this work will help identify high-risk patients with CKD who may benefit from targeted clinical trials that incorporate the use of non-invasive imaging modalities.

Dr. Api Chewcharat
Dr. Chewcharat is a nephrology fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital combined program. He earned a Master of Public Health in biostatistics and epidemiology from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health before completing his internal medicine residency at Mount Auburn Hospital/Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on kidney disease and cancer.
Dr. Chewcharat is studying whether biomarkers can be used to detect thrombotic microangiopathy (TA-TMA), a serious complication that can occur after a stem cell transplant and may severely damage the kidneys, as well as the possibility of creating a predictive tool to assess which patients with TA-TMA are at high risk of requiring dialysis and/or death. In his research, Dr. Chewcharat will examine blood samples from patients who did and did not have TA-TMA to identify if certain biomarkers can serve as early warning signals for TA-TMA. He will also create a scoring tool to help clinicians determine which patients with TA-TMA are at high risk of needing dialysis or death. The goal of Dr. Chewcharat's research is to facilitate earlier diagnosis of TA-TMA and deliver an accurate risk assessment for patients with TA-TMA to reduce adverse outcomes and improve their quality of life.
"My research is dedicated to transforming the clinical landscape of transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy (TA-TMA), a devastating yet under-recognized complication of stem cell transplantation that leads to severe kidney injury and high mortality. By developing an innovative, biomarker-driven early diagnostic strategy and a personalized risk prediction tool, I aim to identify TA-TMA before irreversible organ damage occurs and tailor interventions to mitigate the risk for dialysis or mortality and ultimately improve patients' quality of life. AKF's CSN program will provide me with the resources and collaborative network needed to bring this transformative research to clinical practice bridging key knowledge gaps in TA-TMA."

Meet our previous CSN fellows
For three decades we have supported clinical research, identifying emerging clinical researchers seeking to advance patient care and providing fellowships to fund their research.
Thank you
The CSN fellowship program is an educational activity that is made in part by grants from Akebia Therapeutics and the Hearst Foundation.
Help us build a research pipeline
Help AKF identify and fund the most promising researchers who will advance innovation in kidney disease treatment.