Pediatric Nephrology Chief Receives Society of Pediatric Research Service Award
February 26, 2019
Carlton M. Bates, MD, chief of the Division of Pediatric Nephrology at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, has been selected to receive the 2019 Society for Pediatric Research (SPR) Thomas Hazinski Distinguished Service Award largely for his work to create and teach a grant writing course for researchers in the early stages of their careers. The course, “K-Grant 101 for Pediatric Researchers,” is a six-month tutorial given to five selected applicants from the SPR Junior Members Section who are embarking upon writing proposals for K08 or K23 research funding.
Dr. Bates started the course in 2017, which is a part of the SPR Peer Mentoring Group. Dr. Bates course begins with an initial face-to-face meeting with the selected applicants at the annual spring PAS meeting. Dr. Bates and the participants then have monthly teleconferences in which he provides guidance for how to write individual grant sections. The participants then submit grant section drafts for review by Dr. Bates and a peer, after which Dr. Bates and the peers provide oral and written critiques at a follow-up meeting. Two classes of participants have completed the course to date and increasing numbers of Junior Section Members are applying to take the course each year. The SPR also is tracking past participants successes in obtaining K awards.
Dr. Bates intends to continue the course after he completes his term as a SPR Council member in 2019.
More About Dr. Bates
Dr. Bates received his MD degree from the Ohio State University College of Medicine. He completed a residency in pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and then a fellowship in pediatric nephrology at the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center in Dallas.
After one year as nontenure track faculty at UTSW, Dr. Bates became an assistant professor of pediatrics at The Ohio State University/Nationwide Children’s Hospital in 1999. He was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2007. In 2008, Dr. Bates accepted the position of division chief of pediatric nephrology and the director of the pediatric nephrology fellowship program UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Bates was promoted to professor of pediatrics in 2014. In 2016, Dr. Bates assumed the role of Vice Chair of Basic Research in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Dr. Bates’ research is focused on the role of fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFRs) and their adapter binding proteins in kidney and lower urinary tract development and disease in murine models. Utilizing conditional and global knockout approaches to manipulate expression of FGFRs 1 and/or 2 and their adapter proteins, his lab has uncovered many novel roles for the receptors in multiple lineages and at different stages of kidney and lower urinary tract development. These murine lines often mimic many of the congenital forms of kidney and bladder disease that are leading causes of renal and lower urinary tract disease in children. Recently, the lab has identified novel roles for FGFR2 in protecting against bladder urothelial injury and driving early regeneration of outer urothelial layers after cyclophosphamide infusion.
Dr. Bates was elected to the Society for Pediatric Research in 2002 and was elected to the SPR Council in 2016. Since beginning his tenure on the SPR Council, Dr. Bates has been a member of the Mentoring Work Group and the Finance Committee. He also is actively participating in writing an SPR perspectives manuscript that will offer strategies for early stage pediatric clinician- scientists (and their institutional leadership) to increase their chances of success in obtaining external research funding.
