Peter Igarashi, MD, a nationally recognized nephrologist, physician-scientist and medical-education innovator, has been named dean of the Renaissance School of Medicine (RSOM) at Stony Brook University. Appointed by Hal Paz, MD, executive vice president of Health Sciences and CEO of Stony Brook University Medicine, Dr. Igarashi will begin his tenure on September 12, 2022.
Dr. Igarashi comes to Stony Brook from the University of Minnesota Medical School, where he is currently the Nesbitt chair, professor and head of the Department of Medicine. He has held this position for the past seven years and oversees more than 600 full-time and affiliate faculty, 100 adjunct faculty, and 240 plus residents and fellows. During his tenure in this position, Dr. Igarashi increased National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to the institution by 60 percent, worked to nearly eliminate gender compensation disparities, appointed women to prominent leadership positions, developed new multidisciplinary programs, and created a new Office of Faculty Affairs and Diversity.
Photo provided by the University of Minnesota
“Dr. Igarashi is a superb, academically accomplished physician-leader with a highly successful track record of clinical program growth and research advancement,” said Dr. Paz. “We are delighted that he is joining Stony Brook Medicine. There is no doubt that his expertise and experience will help our medical school continue to forge its reputation as a leading academic institution nationwide.”
An active NIH-funded physician-scientist with research interests in polycystic kidney disease (PKD), transcriptional regulation, epigenetics and kidney development, Dr. Igarashi is the recipient of more than $25 million in NIH grant support over the years. He has published widely in medical periodicals (in English and in Chinese), authoring nine chapters in textbooks and as an author of more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles.
Prior to his University of Minnesota Medical School tenure, Dr. Igarashi served as chief of the Division of Nephrology and founding director of the NIH-funded O’Brien Kidney Research Core Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
While at the University of Texas, he created services to provide regular kidney dialysis to undocumented and traditionally marginalized patients in need of care. Dr. Igarashi also led an initiative there where faculty used artificial intelligence to identify and optimize co-management of patients with hypertension, diabetes and chronic kidney disease in primary care practices — work that continues to be funded by the NIH.
Dr. Igarashi earned his MD from the UCLA School of Medicine and completed an internal medicine residency at the University of California Davis Medical Center. He then moved on to Yale University where he completed a nephrology fellowship and began his academic career in medicine.
Thus far in his career, Dr. Igarashi has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Council of the Association of American Physicians. He has also served as program chair for the American Society of Nephrology, associate editor of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, and has chaired numerous advisory boards and committees of the American Society of Nephrology, NIH, and other scientific organizations.
His awards include an NIH MERIT Award and the Lillian Jean Kaplan International Prize in PKD, the highest honor in the field of innovative research and treatment for PKD.
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