Rate My Professor Nora Franceschini

Franceschini's career at UNC Chapel Hill includes roles as Instructor of Medicine in Nephrology & Hypertension (2001-2005), Postdoctoral Fellow in Genetic Epidemiology (2004-2007), Assistant Professor of Epidemiology (2007-2015), Associate Professor (2015-2019), and Professor since 2019. A nephrology-trained physician and cardiovascular disease epidemiologist, her research examines environmental and genetic determinants of hypertension, kidney function, subclinical atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular diseases in diverse US and global populations bearing high chronic disease burdens. This encompasses gene discovery, multi-omics biomarkers, gene-environment interactions on cardiovascular outcomes, genetics of reproductive traits, and chronic kidney disease of unknown cause in Central America. Notable awards include Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA, 2019), Trudy Bush Fellowship for Cardiovascular Disease Research in Women’s Health (2018), CHARGE Tiger Leadership Award (2019), UNC Postdoctoral Award for Research Excellence (2006), and National Kidney Foundation Young Investigator Award (2002). Key publications feature “Advancing genetic testing in kidney diseases: Report from a National Kidney Foundation Working Group” (Am J Kidney Dis, 2024), “Genome-wide association analysis of blood-pressure traits in african-ancestry individuals reveals common associated genes in african and non-african populations” (Am J Hum Genet, 2013), “Genetics of kidney traits in worldwide populations: the Continental Origins and Genetic Epidemiology Network (COGENT) Kidney Consortium” (Kidney Int, 2020), and “Epigenome-wide association study of kidney function identifies trans-ethnic and ethnic-specific loci” (Genome Med, 2021).