Ana Konvalinka’s bio
Dr. Ana Konvalinka (MD, PhD, FRCPC) is a clinician scientist and transplant nephrologist at the University Health Network in Toronto. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and a Senior Scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. She was born and raised in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, and moved to Canada in 1993. Following a bachelor’s degree in Human Biology at the University of Toronto, Dr. Konvalinka completed medical studies at the University of Ottawa in 2003. She then completed internal medicine and nephrology training in Toronto in 2008. She subsequently embarked on a PhD in basic science, under the supervision of Dr. James Scholey and Dr. Eleftherios Diamandis. Her PhD thesis addressed the effect of angiotensin II on the proteome of primary human proximal tubular cells, and the relevance of this effect in vivo. Following completion of her PhD in 2013, she went on to do the clinical kidney transplant fellowship at Toronto General Hospital. Dr. Konvalinka joined faculty at the University Health Network in 2015.
Her main clinical and research interests are in antibody-mediated rejection and kidney allograft fibrosis. She utilizes systems biology approaches and proteomics to enhance the understanding of the mechanisms, derive novel markers and to repurpose drugs for treatment of kidney disease. Dr. Konvalinka is the director of the Multi-Organ Transplant biobank for kidney, pancreas, and liver transplant programs at the Ajmera Transplant Centre. She has received international research awards (the Human Proteome Project (2016), the American Society of Transplantation Faculty-Development Research Grant (2016) and the Advances in Organ Transplantation Award (2015)) and national research awards (Canadian Society of Transplantation Research Excellence Award (2020), Canadian Society of Nephrology New Investigator Lectureship (2017) and the KRESCENT New Investigator Award (2016)).