Lisa Guay-Woodford, MD

Lisa Guay-Woodford, MD, is Senior Advisor for Clinical and Translational Research Initiatives and an attending physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the Divisions of Nephrology and Human Genetics. She is a professor of Pediatrics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Guay-Woodford will direct a newly created Inherited Renal Diseases Program, which will span the Division of Nephrology and the Division of Human Genetics.

After completing a residency and fellowship training at Boston Children’s Hospital, Dr. Guay-Woodford began her career at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She has become an internationally recognized pediatric nephrologist with a research program focused on identifying clinical and genetic factors involved in the pathogenesis of inherited renal disorders, most notably autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (ARPKD). Her laboratory has identified the disease-causing genes in several experimental models of recessive polycystic kidney disease, and her group participated in the identification of the human ARPKD gene as part of an international consortium.

In addition, her laboratory was the first to identify a candidate modifier gene for recessive polycystic kidney disease. For her contributions to the field, she received the Lillian Jean Kaplan International Prize for Advancement in the Understanding of Polycystic Kidney Disease, given by the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation and the International Society of Nephrology.

Dr. Guay-Woodford has been a leader in promoting clinical and translational science, along with her clinical and investigative work. She established the UAB Hepato/Renal Fibrocystic Disease Research and Translational Core Center, funded by a National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) P30 award. She was the founding director of the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program. At Children’s National, she served as director of the Children’s National Research Institute Center for Translational Research, as well as director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Children’s National (CTSI-CN), which is also funded by the NIH CTSA program. She also served as the associate vice president for Clinical and Translational Research at George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences.

Dr. Guay-Woodford has established and directed national and international collaborative research groups, as well as assumed numerous elected leadership positions, including: president of the Society for Pediatric Research, councilor for the International Pediatric Nephrology Association, chair of the NIH Cellular and Molecular Biology of the Kidney Study Section, board of trustee member for the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation, and board member for the Association of Clinical and Translational Science. Most recently, she has served as a member of the NIDDK Advisory Council.