Rafael Kramann is Professor of Medicine and Chair of Nephro-Cardiology at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He directs the Laboratory of Translational Kidney and Cardiovascular Research in the Department of Nephrology (www.kramannlab.com) at RWTH Aachen University and Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, NL and is board certified physician for internal medicine and nephrology. He received his MD in cardiology at RWTH Aachen University, Germany and his PhD in Cell Biology and Basic Research at Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam. He worked as a postdoc at Harvard Medical Schooln and Brigham and Brigham and Women´s Hospital with Benjamin Humphreys.
His basic and translational research focusses on understanding cardiovascular disease in chronic kidney disease patients and organ fibrosis. He integrates state of the art genetic fate tracing, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, single cells omic and systems biology technologies together with clinical datasets to identify novel therapeutic targets and develop targeted therapeutics for patients with organ fibrosis, vascular sclerosis and heart failure. His clinical research interests are focusing on biomarker discovery in fibrosis , novel treatment strategies in vascular calcification and early diagnosis of uremic cardiomyopathy. He has authored more than 65 primary research and review articles and he is recipient of various prestigous awards including the Grand Prize in the Harvard Innovation Lab Dean´s Health and Lifescience Challenge 2013 the Stanley Shaldon Award of the European Renal Association (ERA-EDTA) 2014, a European Research Council Starting Grant 2015, the Nils Alwall and Carl Ludwig Awards 2014 and 2015 of the German Society of Nephrology, the Bernd Tersteegen Award 2015 of the German Dialysis Association and the Desiderius Award of the Erasmus University in 2018.
