J. Michael Lazarus Distinguished Award

This lectureship was established to honor Dr. J. Michael Lazarus for his major contributions to the clinical science and care of dialysis patients, and to recognize individuals whose research has yielded novel insights related to renal replacement therapy.

Ron Wald is a nephrologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Canada, and Medical Director of the hospital’s Hemodialysis Program. He is also a member of the Department of Nephrology and Hypertension at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel. He is a Professor in the Department of Medicine and in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. A native of Montreal, Ron completed undergraduate and medical degrees at McGill University and continued his clinical training in internal medicine and nephrology at the University of Toronto. This was followed by a Master of Public Health at Harvard University and a research fellowship at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

Ron’s research areas are in critical care nephrology and maintenance dialysis. He served as co-principal investigator of the STARRT-AKI trial, an international trial on the timing of renal replacement therapy (RRT) initiation in critically ill patients with acute kidney injury (AKI). He is co-leading other trials looking at fluid management in patients with AKI (Probe-Fluid) and the optimal RRT dose in AKI (WISDOM). In the realm of maintenance dialysis, he is on the leadership team of the multinational PHOSPHATE trial that is evaluating whether intensive lowering of serum phosphate reduces the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events.