Congratulations to Seth Goldberg, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Nephrology, the first recipient of the division’s Nathan Hellman Memorial Teaching Award in Nephrology.
The Division of Nephrology was recently honored to receive a generous donation from former nephrology fellow Richard Hellman, MD, and his wife, Patricia, to establish the new teaching award. Dr. Hellman completed his fellowship in nephrology at Washington University and Barnes Hospital in 1979 under the leadership of Saulo Klahr, MD, former director of the division. Currently, Dr. Hellman is Associate Professor Emeritus of Clinical Medicine and a practicing nephrologist at the University of Indiana.
The award is dedicated to the Hellmans’son, Nathan E. Hellman, who earned his MD/PhD at Washington University School of Medicine. After completing his residency at University of Pennsylvania, Nathan began his nephrology training at the Massachusetts General Hospital Joint Nephrology Fellowship Program in 2007. The following year, he founded the popular Renal Fellow Network Blog, a website that is written for and by renal fellows. (Andrew Malone, MB, BCh, Assistant Professor of Medicine in our division, currently serves as one of three faculty advisors for the site.) Nathan was completing his nephrology research fellowship, and was to be appointed a faculty member in July of 2010, when he passed away from complications due to a stroke on February 13, 2010. He was 36 years old.
The Hellman Teaching Award in Nephrology will be given annually to a faculty member selected by fellows within our division. Awardees will receive a cash award to support professional development and his/her name inscribed on a special plaque.
“Our division has always placed an emphasis on medical education, and it is this tradition that I strive to uphold,” says Dr. Goldberg. “I am honored to have been recognized by our fellows for this award.”
Dr. Goldberg earned his MD at University of South Florida College of Medicine and completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in nephrology at Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University School of Medicine. His multiple awards received during his time in the division are further testament to his teaching abilities. He received the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Knowlton Award for Internal Medicine in 2009; the Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Field of Nephrology in 2010 and 2012; and the Distinguished Service Teaching Award in 2011 and 2015.
Goldberg is co-director of WU’s Multidisciplinary Kidney Stone Clinic, which was established three years ago to manage and treat those suffering from kidney stones and to help prevent the risk of reoccurrence. In addition, as part of the division’s plan to take our physician services into the community, he will soon be starting a clinic in South County to see patients before they go on dialysis.
In 2016, Goldberg and Assistant Professor of Medicine, Moe Mahjoub, PhD, were recipients of a Translational Innovation Grant. This grant program provides resources to basic scientists and clinical investigators within the division to collaborate on research projects with translational potential. Their winning proposal was entitled Midbody Accumulation and Secretion in Polycystic Kidney Disease, aims to define how defects in components of the cell cytoskeleton contribute to the pathogenesis of polycystic kidney disease.