Mary F. Barbe, PhD
Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology
Temple University School of Medicine
Dr. Barbe is Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Temple University School of Medicine. For the past 17 years, Dr. Barbe’s research has focused on examining the effects of overuse injury on musculoskeletal tissues, specifically the effects of repetition and force on tissues as a consequence of an upper extremity Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (a type of overuse injury), using a novel operant rat model developed in the laboratory. She is currently exploring inducers of tissue fibrosis and degeneration occurring with overuse, as well as effective interventions for the inflammatory and fibrotic tissue changes as well as associated behavioral declines. She is currently examining means of successful reinnervation of bladder and urethral sphincter targets after spinal root injury in collaboration with Dr. Michael Ruggieri of the Department of Urology, The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. They have shown that functional reinnervation (using electrophysiology) and recentralization (using neuroanatomical tract tracing) of the bladder can occur using a number of surgical strategies, including homotopic reconnection of severed sacral roots innervating the bladder and heterotopic reconnection using genitofemoral or femoral nerves that originate from more rostral spinal cord segments.
Matthew D. Barber, MD, MHS, MSOD
W. Allen Addison Distinguished Professor and Chair
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Duke University Medical Center
Dr. Barber is W. Allen Addison Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Barber earned his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, a master’s degree in Health Science in Clinical Research from Duke University School of Medicine and recently a master’s degree in Positive Organizational Development and Change from Case Weatherhead School of Management. He completed residency training in obstetrics and gynecology and a fellowship in urogynecology and pelvic reconstructive surgery at Duke University. His clinical practice focuses on the full spectrum of diagnosis, prevention and medical, behavioral, and surgical treatments for women with pelvic floor disorders (PFDs). Dr. Barber’s research focus is the conduct of randomized clinical trials for the treatment of gynecologic conditions, particularly surgical trials for PFDs. He is an internationally recognized expert in developing, validating, and assessing research outcomes in PFDs, particularly health-related quality of life and patient reported-outcomes. He is currently Chair of the Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery Division of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and is the Associate Editor of the journal Urogynecology. He is the co-editor of the 5th and 6th editions of Walter & Karram Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery.
Scott Bauer, MD, MS
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Urology, Epidemiology & Biostatistics
University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA
Dr. Bauer is a general internist, translational epidemiologist, and clinician investigator with a primary care practice based at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He is also a member of the Baker Aging Research Institute and the Kidney Health Research Collective at the University of California, San Francisco. His academic focus is to understand the mechanisms underlying urologic aging and to define clinical phenotypes and biomarkers for older adults with debilitating urologic conditions. Dr. Bauer's areas of research expertise include geriatric urology, lifestyle and age-related risk factors, and longitudinal assessment of biomarkers, functional outcomes, and quality of life. His research is funded by a K76 Paul B. Beeson award from the NIA and an R01 from the NIDDK, for which he leads a randomized clinical trial testing an exercise intervention for urinary symptoms in sedentary older men with benign prostatic hyperplasia.
Zach Danziger, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine - Division of Physical Therapy
Emory University
Dr. Danziger is Associate Professor at Emory University in the Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine and Biomedical Engineering. His research focuses on understanding how the nervous system controls the body at the level of systems physiology. This includes mapping the complex web of reflexes that regulate the lower urinary tract and its dysfunction in aging and disease, and how primary motor cortex organizes high-dimensional operation of complex systems such as brain-computer interfaces. Dr. Danziger’s approach is to use model systems (human, animal, and computational) to deepen our mechanistic understanding of how neural control is achieved, and how to reverse its disruption caused by disease.
Nicole De Nisco, PhD
Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
The University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. De Nisco is Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Urology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. De Nisco earned her PhD in Molecular Biology at MIT in 2013 and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her laboratory studies host-pathogen-microbiome interactions that underlie recurrent urinary tract infection (UTI). The De Nisco lab seeks to inform new therapies for recurrent UTI by interrogating the metabolic relationship between the urinary microbiota and the human host. Additional ongoing collaborative projects in the De Nisco lab focus on developing novel UTI vaccine strategies and new UTI diagnostic tools.
Ekene Enemchukwu, MD, MPH, FACS, FPMRS
Associate Professor of Urology
Stanford University
Dr. Enemchukwu is Associate Professor of Urology at Stanford University School of Medicine and serves as the Medical Director of the Stanford Multidisciplinary Pelvic Health Center. She graduated from Duke University and earned her combined degree in Medicine (MD) and Public Health (MPH) at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and Gillings School of Global Public Health. She completed her urology training at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a fellowship in Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center. Dr. Enemchukwu is an NIH-funded researcher whose interests are in the areas of urinary incontinence, overactive bladder, and patient-centered care. Her research focuses on improving health care delivery, and patient access, engagement, and adherence to therapies for urinary incontinence. She also serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Urology, and Neurourology and Urodynamics.
Alison Huang, MD, MAS
Professor of Medicine, Urology, and Epidemiology & Biostatistics
University of California, San Francisco
Dr. Huang is Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Urology, and Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. She serves as Director of Research for the Division of General Internal Medicine at UCSF Health and Director of the UCSF Women’s Health Clinical Research Center. Dr. Huang is a clinical scientist dedicated to advancing understanding and improving management of the impact of aging on genitourinary health and women’s health. She has designed and led multiple NIH-funded randomized trials of pharmacologic, behavioral, and integrative health interventions for lower urinary tract syndromes in older women of diverse backgrounds, including the CURE trial of device-guided slow-paced respiration for female overactive bladder syndrome, the LILA trial of a therapeutic pelvic yoga program for ambulatory older women with urinary incontinence, and the TRIUMPH trial to compare the multisystem effects of pharmacologic treatment strategies for urgency-predominant incontinence in older women. She directs NIH-funded research training programs for postgraduate research trainees and junior faculty, including the NIDDK-funded Urological Epidemiology Junior Faculty K12 Program at UCSF, and is an author of the Designing Clinical Research 5th edition textbook (Wolters Kluwer). She has also developed and validated self-report measures of genitourinary and sexual function used in clinical studies of women with pelvic health conditions in the US and internationally.
Teresa Liu, PhD
Assistant Research Professor, Department of Urology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Liu is Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Urology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She was an NIDDK K12 Scholar from 2015-2020. Dr. Liu’s research currently focuses on the underlying aging mechanisms driving benign prostatic hyperplasia and the accompanying lower urinary tract symptoms. Using an aging mouse model to recapitulate human disease, she is identifying molecular pathways that are critical to disease progression and treatment resistance. In particular, she is interested in the epigenetic regulation of the steroid hormone milieu through normal aging. Additionally, she is examining interventions, including aerobic exercise, that could improve quality of life.
David Page, PhD
James B. Duke Distinguished Professor, Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Division of Biostatistics
Duke University
Dr. Page is Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Duke University. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where his dissertation focused on theoretical aspects of machine learning. He became involved in biomedical applications of machine learning while a postdoc at Oxford University. During his 20 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Page supervised 17 PhDs and 3 postdocs who went on to become scientists at Google, Amazon, Facebook, Yale, and the Carbone Cancer Center, as well as faculty at Carnegie-Mellon, Catholic University of Leuven, Michigan, Case Western, UCLA, Minnesota State, and Wisconsin. He has also supervised multiple master’s students, including now-current PhD students at Duke, Princeton, and MIT.
Jonathan C. Routh, MD, MPH, FAAP
Chief, Duke Center for Children’s Surgery
Paul H. Sherman Distinguished Associate Professor of Surgery
Department Urology
Duke University School of Medicine
Dr. Routh is a pediatric urologist and health services researcher at Duke University School of Medicine, where he serves as the Chief of Children’s Surgery and is the Paul H. Sherman Distinguished Associate Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, and Population Health Sciences. His clinical and research interests include minimally-invasive surgery, complex urologic reconstruction (particularly in children with spina bifida and neurogenic bladder), surgical and non-surgical management of children with disorders of sex development, and pediatric urologic oncology. He is currently an Associate Section Editor for the Journal of Urology, the Chair of the Steering Committee for the Urologic Management to Preserve Initial Renal Function Protocol for Young Children with Spina Bifida (UMPIRE) study, and the co-PI at Duke for both UMPIRE and the National Spina Bifida Patient Registry. Dr. Routh has extensive experience as a mentor and currently serves as a formal mentor for Duke’s KURe K12 and the UrogynCREST R25 programs; his list of mentees includes 4 undergraduate students, 10 medical students, 10 urology residents, 2 post-doctoral researchers, and 6 junior faculty members. In addition, he serves on the Advisory Committee for the Duke Urology K12 program and is the Co-Director of the Duke Research Development Course for Trainees.
Maryrose Sullivan, PhD
Research Health Scientist, VA Boston Healthcare System
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Sullivan’s scientific interests have focused primarily on benign disorders of the bladder, including those related to outlet obstruction, diabetes, spinal cord injury and Parkinson’s disease. Her research is aimed at uncovering mechanisms responsible for bladder function/dysfunction and urinary incontinence, with the ultimate goal of identifying targetable pathways for intervention and alleviating lower urinary tract symptoms. As a research scientist and biomedical engineer, her research projects exploit a number of multidisciplinary approaches to interrogate these pathways at the cellular, tissue and whole animal levels and include imaging, in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo techniques. With funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs and NIDDK, she has published numerous original articles, chapters and reviews on topics related to urinary incontinence, bladder contractility, bladder outlet obstruction, neurogenic and non-neurogenic detrusor overactivity, and diabetic bladder dysfunction. She has been fortunate to be involved in mentoring and supervising many urology residents, post-docs, medical students and junior faculty. Dr. Sullivan is also an active member of the AUA, SUFU, SPR and ICS, and is a member of the editorial board of several urology focused journals. Dr. Sullivan serves on the KURe Advisory Board.
Anne-Catrin Uhlemann, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Dr. Uhlemann is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where she also directs the CUIMC Microbiome & Pathogen Collaborative Center and the Columbia University O’Brien Center for Benign Urology. She completed her medical training at the Eberhard-Karls-University in Tübingen, Germany and received her PhD from the University of London, UK. Dr. Uhlemann completed her residency in internal medicine and fellowship training in infectious diseases at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. Dr. Uhlemann’s research focuses on the mechanisms and evolution of resistance to antibiotics, in particular in Gram-negative bacteria. This includes investigations into carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales infections, which are considered an area of highest priority research by the CDC. Using combined large-scale genomic and genetic engineering approaches, her group has characterized the emergence of resistance to novel treatment regimens, including the highly polygenetic nature of polymyxin resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae and the impact of antimicrobial resistance on bacterial virulence and fitness. Other ongoing studies are investigating the role of the gut microbiome in urinary tract infections and the contributions of the microbiome to chronic diseases.
Camille P. Vaughan, MD, MS
Associate Professor of Medicine
Emory University School of Medicine
Dr. Vaughan is a geriatrician and clinical investigator focused on optimizing the care of older adults with multiple chronic conditions. Dr. Vaughan has a joint appointment as Division Director for Geriatrics & Gerontology in the Department of Medicine at Emory University and as the Atlanta Site Director for the Department of Veterans Affairs Birmingham/Atlanta Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. As in many areas of geriatrics, she works collaboratively and in a leadership capacity with diverse teams of investigators to carry out multi-site clinical studies evaluating new interventions to enhance health care for older adults. With funding from VA, AHRQ, and NIA, Dr. Vaughan’s recent projects involve evaluating behavioral therapy for treatment of common urinary symptoms in people with Parkinson disease, testing virtual delivery of evidence-based treatment and prevention strategies for common geriatric conditions such as incontinence, and evaluating integrated behavioral treatment for older adults with coexisting nocturia and insomnia.
Philip J. Walther, MD, PhD, MBA, FACS
Professor of Surgery/Urology
Associate Professor of Experimental Pathology
Duke University
Dr. Walther received his MD-PhD at Duke, his urologic residency at UCLA, an American Cancer Society junior faculty fellowship at Duke; and subsequently an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business (health care management). His lab research interests have been: 1) Developmental GU onco-therapeutics using human xenograft-supported GU tumors (primarily bladder) 2) the genomic elucidation of the role of oncogenic HPV genotypes with lower GU cancers (bladder, penis, and urethra). He served as Chair, GU Surgery Subcommittee of the NIH-funded cooperative study group-CALGB. Dr. Walther was the Site PI at Duke for the first NIH-sponsored multi-institutional study of immune-therapeutics of renal cancer using high-dose interleukin-2, and served as PI of a R21-funded grant to initiate an institutional research program in prostate cancer. He was PI of a VA-based epidemiologic effort with Community Medicine in the study of race-related genomic differences associated with prostate cancer occurrence. Finally, he served on the Study Committee of a 7 year NIH-sponsored nutritional intervention prostate cancer prevention study. Dr. Walther serves on the KURe Advisory Board.
Lenaine Westney, MD
Professor in Department of Urology
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. O. Lenaine Westney is Professor in the Department of Urology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her areas of clinical expertise are postprostatectomy incontinence, neurogenic voiding dysfunction, post-radiation urinary tract reconstruction, and urinary diversion. In her role as the primary urologic reconstructive surgeon in the department, she has emphasized clinical and research collaborations with Colorectal, Gynecologic Oncology and Plastics Surgery with the goal of improving management and outcomes of urinary tract structural and functional disorders in patients with pelvic malignancy. She is certified in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery and directs the MDACC Urinary Tract and Pelvic Reconstruction fellowship program. Additionally, Dr. Westney has authored articles and chapters dealing with the management of incontinence in high-risk patient populations. Her current research focuses on the long-term sexual and voiding dysfunction in colorectal cancer patients, the progression of voiding symptoms in hypoestrogenic states, and post-prostatectomy urinary complications. Dr. Westney is an active member of many local, national, and international surgical societies.