Advisory Board

The rapidly changing critical care industry requires professionals to have constant access to recent publications, new protocols and technological advances. Along with our EXPERT ADVISORY BOARD, CRRT Online aims to support our members by providing a portal for physicians, nurses and industry personnel that posts a range of up-to-date links and CRRT specific content. Guidance for application of CRRT is presented in the categories of Best Practices, Practical Tools, and Industry. We hope you will take time to familiarize yourself with the site so that it becomes a resource you know you can rely on.

Linda Awdishu, PharmD, MAS
Associate Clinical Professor of Pharmacy and Medicine
University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
La Jolla, CA USA

Linda Awdishu earned her Bachelors of Science in Pharmacy from the University of Toronto in 1999, Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Colorado in 2008 and Masters of Clinical Research from the University of California in 2007. She is an Associate Clinical Professor of Pharmacy and Medicine at UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. She maintains a clinical practice in the chronic kidney disease program. Her research program is focused on drug induced kidney injury.

Jorge Cerdá, MD, MS, FACP, FASN
Chief, Dept. of Medicine
St Peter’s Health Partners
Clinical Professor of Medicine
Albany Medical College,
Albany, NY, USA

Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, Albany Medical College, Albany NY
Fulbright Scholar, 1980
Fellow, American College of Physicians
Fellow, American Society of Nephrology
Chair, Medical Advisory Board, World Foundation for Renal Care
Member, Organizing Committee, International Conference on Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy
Editorial Board, American Journal of Kidney Diseases, NephSAP, American Board of Internal Medicine
Main research interests: Acute Renal Failure, CRRT, Acute Renal Failure post Cardiothoracic Surgery.

Stuart Goldstein, MD
Professor of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Division of Nephrology and Hypertension & The Heart Institute
Director, Center for Acute Care Nephrology
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Cincinnati, OH USA

Dr. Goldstein serves as Director for the Center for Acute Care Nephrology (CACN) at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The CACN’s mission is to coordinate all AKI related clinical, research and outcomes efforts at CCHMC and to function as a nexus for coordinating multi-center pediatric AKI research. Dr. Goldstein is the Founder and Principal Investigator of the Prospective Pediatric AKI Research Group (www.ppaki.org), a 50 center international pediatric acute care nephrology research consortium that will focuses on pediatric AKI epidemiology, interventional trials, device evaluation and genetic studies. Dr. Goldstein is also the program director for the only Pediatric Acute Care Nephrology fellowship in the United States.

Eileen Lischer, MA, BSN, RN, CNN
Acute Dialysis
San Diego, CA USA

Eileen Lischer RN BSN MA has over 37 years of Nephrology nursing experience. She has worked as an educator and a nurse manager. Currently she is the Acute Dialysis Administrative Nurse for all four programs at the University of California Medical Center, San Diego. Her expertise includes adult and pediatric hemodialysis, CRRT, intra operative CRRT, peritoneal dialysis and apheresis. Eileen works collaboratively with the Critical Care Units to educate the primary care nurses in CRRT concepts and system applications. She coordinates a Diabetic Initiative focused on improving patient outcomes through nurse education. Eileen is actively involved in both kidney and liver research projects. She is a lecturer at the UCSD Extension program.

Etienne Macedo, MD, PhD
University of California San Diego
San Diego, CA USA

Etienne Macedo graduated from the University of Sao Paulo (USP) in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1996. She completed her residency and fellowship through the USP Hospital das Clinicas in 2001, her doctorate in 2006 and her post-doctorate at the University of California, San Diego in June of 2010. Returning to Brazil in 2010, she dedicated the following years to working with Acute Kidney Injury at Hospital das Clinicas – University of Sao Paulo. Back in San Diego, she intends to continue to work as a researcher in AKI and pursue to maintain her career as a clinician.

Ravindra Mehta, MD, FACP, FRCP
Professor Emeritus of Medicine
University of California, San Diego School of Medicine
Associate Chair for Clinical Research
Department of Medicine
UCSD Medical Center
San Diego, CA USA

Dr. Mehta is a Professor Emeritus of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Medicine at University of California San Diego where he directs the UCSD Masters in Clinical Research Program. He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of acute kidney injury (AKI). He chairs the annual International CRRT Conference that is in its 24th year in 2019. He is a founding member of the Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI) and the Acute Kidney Injury network (AKIN). His research has informed the development of the RIFLE and AKIN diagnostic and staging criteria for AKI and development of KDIGO guidelines for AKI. He chaired the ISN Committee on AKI from 1996 to 2014 and was elected to the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) Council in 2015. In 2014 he was appointed as the project Director for the ISN 0by25 initiative to eliminate preventable deaths from AKI by 2025. He has spearheaded several innovative multicenter studies including the CRRT vs IHD study, PICARD network studies on AKI and several international projects supported through the NIH funded UAB/UCSD O’Brien Center for AKI research that have provided new knowledge in the field. He has been recognized as one of the Best Doctors in San Diego and the US for several years. In 2008 he was recognized by the American Nephrologists of Indian Origin and in March 2009 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in the UK. He received the ISN Bywaters Award for lifetime achievement in AKI in April 2011. He received the M.B.B.S. degree (1976) from the Government Medical School in Amritsar, India, and the M.D. (1979) and D.M. (1981) degrees from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India. He subsequently completed a nephrology fellowship at the University of Rochester in Rochester New York and obtained his boards in Internal Medicine (1986) and Nephrology (1988). He has been on the faculty at San Diego since 1988.

Theresa Mottes, MSN, RN,CPNP-AC,CDN
Texas Children’s Hospital
Nurse Practitioner
Pediatric Critical Care Nephrology
Houston, TX USA

Theresa Mottes has over 20 years of pediatric renal replacement therapy experience is both the critical care setting and the outpatient dialysis setting. She has been involved in research with acute kidney injury, continuous renal replacement therapies and simulation based education for CRRT training. Theresa currently is a nurse practitioner for critical care nephrology. Theresa is very active with ANNA, as the current Pediatric Specialty Practice Network facilitator. She has presented at both national and international conferences.

Thiago Reis, MD
Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology
Faculty of Health Sciences
University of Brasília, Brasília
Distrito Federal, BRAZIL

Thiago Reis graduated from the University of Brasília (UnB) Brasília, Brazil in 2010. He completed his Fellowship in Nephrology and Kidney Transplantation at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), São Paulo, Brazil in 2015. Dr. Reis performed a Research Fellowship under the supervision of Professor Claudio Ronco at the International Renal Research Institute of Vicenza (IRRIV), a satellite unit of the Università degli Studi di Padova, Padua, Italy in 2020. He is currently a researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology, University of Brasília, and assistant of nephrology at the Clínica de Doenças Renais de Brasília.

Ashita J. Tolwani, MD, MSc
Professor of Medicine
Unversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)
Birmingham, AL, USA

Dr. Tolwani is also the Associate Director for the Nephrology fellowship program at UAB. Dr. Tolwani completed her nephrology fellowship at UAB and joined the Division as a faculty member in 1999. Her interests are in clinical outcomes research in nephrology, specifically with issues concerning continuous renal replacement therapy in patients with acute kidney injury in the intensive care unit. She received a Masters of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in June 2004. Her other research interests include the use of anticoagulants during continuous renal replacement therapy.