Jiang He, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACE

Director

Professor of Epidemiology and Clinical Medicine
Joseph S. Copes, M.D. Chair of Epidemiology
Department of Epidemiology
Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

Dr. He is the Chair and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and Professor of Clinical Medicine and Human Genetics at the Tulane University School of Medicine. Dr. He is a nationally and internationally well-known expert in the clinical, translational, and epidemiological research of cardiovascular and kidney diseases. He has conducted novel studies in obesity, hypertension, diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease funded by the National Institutes of Health. He has been the principal investigator and co-investigator for more than 40 major research awards from the National Institutes of Health and American Heart Association worth more than 160 million US dollars. Dr. He has authored over 500 scientific articles and has published in first class biomedical journals, including New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of The American Medical Association, Lancet, and Nature Genetics. He has received many awards from local, national, and international academic institutions and professional societies.

Lee Hamm, M.D.

Co-Director

Senior Vice President and Dean of the School of Medicine
The James R. Doty Distinguished Professor and Chair
Tulane University

Dr. Lee Hamm is Senior Vice President and Dean of the School of Medicine, and the James R. Doty Distinguished Professor and Chair, Tulane University School of Medicine. He is also Co-Director of the Tulane Hypertension and Renal Center of Excellence. Dr. Hamm’s honors and awards include a Merit Award from the NIH, an American Heart Association Established Investigator Award, American Heart Association Distinguished Service Award, the Donald Seldin Award of the National Kidney Foundation, and the Founders Medal from the Southern Society of Clinical Investigation. He is an elected Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American Heart Association, and he was elected to membership in the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He has been on the editorial board of Kidney International and the American Journal of Physiology, and has been a consulting editor for Hypertension. His research has been funded by numerous research grants from the AHA, VA and NIH. He has authored more than one hundred twenty original articles and book chapters. Clinically, his interests are general nephrology focused on cardiovascular disease in kidney disease, metabolic causes of kidney stones, and electrolyte and acid-base disorders.

Patrice “Patrick” Delafontaine, MD, FACC, FACP

Co-Director

Executive Dean
Jack R. Aron Chair of Administrative Medicine
Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology, and Physiology
Tulane University School of Medicine

Dr. Patrick Delafontaine is Executive Dean, the Jack R. Aron Chair of Administrative Medicine, and Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology, and Physiology, Tulane University School of Medicine. He is an elected Fellow of the Association of University Cardiologists, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Clinical and Climatological Association, American Society for Clinical Investigation, and Association of American Physicians. He is on the editorial boards of Journal of Investigative Medicine, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and Growth Hormone and IGF Research. He has a long record of research in the field of Insulin-Like Growth Factor (IGF-1) biology, atherosclerosis, and skeletal muscle wasting, with his research funded by the NIH for more than 35 years. He has authored over 200 original articles and book chapters. Dr. Delafontaine served as the Tulane PI of the Louisiana NIH funded IDeA-CTR (LaCaTS, Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center), which established the Tulane Clinical Trial Unit, and served as Co-Director of the LSU-Tulane COBRE program “Mentoring in Cardiovascular Biology”. He is the Co-Director of the Tulane Faculty Physician-Scientist Pipeline Program (PSPP). Dr. Delafontaine has receive numerous awards, including the Tinsley Harrison Award of the Southern Society of Clinical Investigation and Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association. He has served on numerous NIH Study Sections, and was a charter member and chair of the NIH Vascular Cellular and Molecular Biology Study Section. Clinically, his interests are interventional cardiology, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and valvular heart disease.

Jing Chen, MD, MMSc, MSc

Clinical Director

Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine
Tulane University School of Medicine
Professor of Epidemiology, Department of Epidemiology
Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

Dr. Chen is a Professor of Medicine in the Section of Nephrology and Hypertension at Tulane University School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Chen has formal training in Clinical Medicine, is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Nephrology, and is a Clinical Hypertension Specialist. She has extensive experience in the design, conduct, analysis, and interpretation of clinical research and clinical trials in hypertension, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease. She is a principal investigator and co-investigator on several NIH-funded multicenter clinical research studies and clinical trials. She authored approximately 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Amanda Hyre Anderson, PhD, MPH

Associate Director

Associate Professor of Epidemiology
Department of Epidemiology

Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

Dr. Amanda Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Anderson’s major research interests address the epidemiology of kidney diseases, with an emphasis on the causes and consequences of the excessive morbidity and mortality experienced by patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). She has a particular focus on factors associated with CKD progression including fibrosis measures and the gut microbiome, prediction of kidney function decline over time, and the insufficiently characterized burden of co-morbidities and outcomes associated with CKD. Dr. Anderson is the principal investigator of two NIH/NIDDK R01 studies to investigate blood and urine fibrosis measures as predictors of CKD progression and cardiovascular disease in the setting of CKD, and to examine associations between the gut microbiome, plasma and fecal metabolomes, and CKD progression. She has over 10 years of experience providing scientific and operational leadership to Scientific and Data Coordinating Centers of large, multi-center studies examining risk factors for cardiovascular disease and progression of kidney disease among adults with CKD.

External Advisory Committee

TUTSI’s External Advisory Committee (EAC) provides oversight and advice to Institute leadership on the development and planning of concepts and programs; encourages and assists faculty development and mentoring; identifies resources and evaluates the development of the Institute; evaluates the progress of junior faculty’s research projects and professional development; and reviews and recommends candidate investigators for replacement/substitute projects.

The EAC is chaired by Dr. Lawrence Appel and is comprised of members selected for their superior expertise in the specific areas of research related to the junior faculty investigators, and for their distinguished reputations as mentors and advisors.

Lawrence J. Appel, MD, MPH

David Molina, M.D., M.P.H. Professor of Medicine with Joint Appointments in Epidemiology, International Health and Nursing
Director, Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research

Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

Frank Hu, MD, PhD

Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology

Chair, Department of Nutrition

Department of Epidemiology

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health