Nephrologists
Transplant Team Member Profiles
Nephrologists
Matthew R. Weir, MD
Professor of Medicine
Head of Division of Nephrology
PubMed
Dr. Weir is an attending physician and Director of the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He is also a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and completed his residency training in medicine at the Waterbury and Yale-New Haven Hospitals in Connecticut. Later, he completed his nephrology training at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He then moved to then to the University of Maryland Medical Center where he has been a full-time faculty member since 1983.
Dr. Weir's primary research interests include management and prevention of cardiovascular disease in kidney transplant patients, and developing new information technology to avoid medication errors in transplant patients. He has written more than 450 manuscripts and book chapters about these topics, and has presented at numerous international scientific association meetings, hospitals and medical schools. Dr. Weir currently reviews manuscripts for more than 20 major medical journals, and serves on the editorial board of 16 journals. He has two active NIH supported grants from NIDDK, and is a member of numerous associations, including the American Society of Nephrology, the National Kidney Foundation, the American Heart Association and the American Society of Transplantation.
Charles P. Cangro, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
PubMed
Dr. Cangro has been a faculty member of the University of Maryland School of Medicine since 1996. He currently serves as the medical director of the Medical Center's post-transplant clinic. He received his medical degree from the University of Florida School of Medicine in Gainesville, where he completed fellowship training in both internal medicine and nephrology.
Dr. Cangro's special interest is managing the care of patients with diabetes both before and after transplantation. He received both his bachelor's and doctorate degrees from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on the role of glutamate and N-acetyl-aspartyl-glutamate in the central nervous system. Dr. Cangro is a long-standing member of the Institutional Review Board.
Nadiesda Costa, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Medicine
PubMed
Dr. Nadiesda Costa is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology. She comes to Baltimore from North Carolina where she trained in internal Medicine and Nephrology at East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine. She also completed a master’s degree in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. During her time at the University of Carolina she completed additional training as a transplant nephrologist.
Dr. Costa is a staff physician at the University of Maryland Medical Center where she attends the general nephrology and kidney transplant services.
Abdolreza Haririan, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Medicine
PubMed
Dr. Haririan is a transplant nephrologist and an attending physician on transplant medicine and general nephrology services at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He received his medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and his master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center, and later went on to complete fellowship training in general nephrology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and transplant nephrology at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Before joining the Medical Center, Dr. Haririan was the medical director for the kidney and pancreas transplant programs at Harper Hospital in Detroit. He has established and is directing a weekly multidisciplinary transplant biopsy review meeting, and is the director of clinical research in transplantation in the division of nephrology. His major clinical and research interest is acute and chronic antibody-mediated graft injury. He has led efforts to establish institutional protocols for diagnosis and treatment of these important causes of graft dysfunction and graft failure. Dr. Haririan has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications in major transplant and nephrology journals. He is a reviewer for the American Journal of Transplantation, Transplantation, Transplant International and Clinical Transplantation, as well as an editorial board member for Clinical Nephrology.
Assistant Professor of Medicine
PubMed
Dr. Thomas received his medical degree from the University of Debrecen Medical and Health Science Center in 2002. He completed his internal medicine residency in 2007 at the University of Connecticut Health Center, in Farmington, Connecticut, and served as Chief Medical Resident from 2007-2008. He then went on to complete his Nephrology Fellowship at the University of Connecticut in 2010. In 2011, Dr. Thomas completed a one-year transplant nephrology fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, S.C.
Upon completion of his transplant nephrology fellowship, Dr. Thomas stayed on faculty at South Carolina until 2014 when he joined the University of Maryland Division of Nephrology for the transplant nephrology program.
Richard Ugarte, MD, MHS
Assistant Professor of Medicine
PubMed
Dr. Ugarte is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1995, and completed his residency training in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Later, Dr. Ugarte completed fellowship training in nephrology and transplant nephrology at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Ugarte's clinical research interests have included the use of anti-rejection Thymoglobulin induction, the use of deceased donor kidney transplants from donors with acute kidney injury and systemic inflammation as a risk factor for graft failure. His more recent interest includes understanding reasons for early kidney failure among African American kidney transplant recipients, with a focus on a particular kind of immune rejection known as chronic T-cell mediated rejection, and working with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to look at possible genetic predispositions. Dr. Ugarte received his master's degree in health science from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Terry Watnick, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
PubMed
Dr. Terry Watnick is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology. She received her medical degree from The Yale School of Medicine and completed her Internal Medicine training at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She then moved to the Johns Hopkins Hospital where she received Clinical Training in Nephrology. She also completed a research fellowship that was focused on the genetics of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. Dr. Watnick subsequently joined the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where she rose through the ranks to Associate Professor. During this time she continued to develop her clinical and research interests in Inherited Kidney Diseases. She moved to the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2012 where she continues to lead the Baltimore Polycystic Kidney Disease Research and Clinical Core Center.