Kai-Uwe Eckardt is Head of the Department of Nephrology and Medical Intensive Care at the Charité in Berlin, Germany. He attained an MD from the University of Münster in 1985 and obtained residency and fellowship training in pathology, physiology, internal medicine and nephrology at the Universities of Münster, Hannover, Zurich, Oxford and Berlin. From 2004 to 2017 he was Chair of Nephrology and Hypertension at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, where he also served as Vice Dean for Research and International Afffairs from 2009-2016.
Dr. Eckardt´s major scientific interests lie in the molecular mechanisms and relevance of oxygen sensing and the development of acute and chronic renal injury. He was chairman of a collaborative research centre on kidney injury, founded by the German Research Foundation (SFB) and is principal investigator of the German Chronic Kidney Disease (GCKD) study. Dr. Eckardt is a past council member of the European Renal Association – European Dialysis and Transplant Association (ERA-EDTA) and the International Society of Nephrology (ISN). He has served as program chair for the World Congress of Nephrology in 2009 in Milan and 2017 in Mexico City. He was also a founding executive committee member of the international organization Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) and chaired KDIGO from 2008 to 2012. Dr. Eckardt also serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including the British Medical Journal, the Journal of Molecular Medicine and Kidney International.