Dr. Zhong’s research has progressed from clinical and translational nephrology to mechanistic studies of progressive kidney disease, CKD-related cardiovascular complications, kidney lymphatic biology, and kidney development. Her work has addressed transplantation, CKD progression, and dialysis-associated cardiovascular risk, and defined mechanisms of HIV-associated nephropathy using transgenic mouse models showing how podocyte-restricted HIV gene expression drives podocyte injury and glomerulosclerosis. She later focused on CKD-associated cardiovascular disease, examining how kidney injury disrupts lipid/lipoprotein biology, macrophage inflammation, vascular injury, and cardiac fibrosis. More recently, she has highlighted kidney lymphatic vessels as active regulators of renal homeostasis and injury responses, helping clear interstitial lipoproteins and immune mediators to shape inflammation, remodeling, and kidney–systemic crosstalk. In parallel, her kidney development studies show how antenatal stress and developmental programming affect nephron endowment, glomerular maturation, and lifelong disease risk. Her current research combines genetic and injury models, molecular/cellular methods, pathology, quantitative imaging, and spatial/pathomics analyses of rodent and human tissue to define how development, lymphatics, lipid handling, and inflammation determine renal repair versus progression.

Dr. Sullivan is a pediatric cardiologist with advanced training in pediatric pulmonary hypertension. Her research focuses on examining the role of pulmonary vasodilator therapies in the treatment of pulmonary vascular disease in patients with single ventricle congenital heart disease. She also has interest in evaluating the hemodynamics and treatments for pulmonary hypertension associated with congenital heart disease and bronchopulmonary dysplasia. As a member of the multi-disciplinary Vanderbilt Children’s Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension Program and North American Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension Network, she is involved in multi-institutional collaborative research on pediatric pulmonary hypertension.

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