Samira Farouk, MD, MS, FASN is a board-certified transplant nephrologist and Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Education at

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City. It is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight ...

(ISMMS). She teaches medical students, residents, and fellows, and also develops and studies innovations in medical education. Her clinical research interests include the

pathogen In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ ...

esis of kidney fibrosis in regards to transplant survival and

chronic kidney disease Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a type of kidney disease in which a gradual loss of kidney function occurs over a period of months to years. Initially generally no symptoms are seen, but later symptoms may include leg swelling, feeling tired, vo ...

s. Farouk is also cofounder of the free mobile-friendly nephrology teaching tool NephSIM, Associate Program Director of the Nephrology Fellowship at ISMMS, and Director of Mentoring and Trainee Engagement of KIDNEYcon.

Early life and education

Farouk is originally from

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. She received multiple scholarships and awards by the time she graduated from Cherry Hill High School East in 2003 as Valedictorian, including the Edward J. Bloustein Scholarship, Robert C. Byrd Scholarship and the NSJIAA athlete award. Farouk then attended

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

where she graduated with a

B.S.E. A Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) or a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) is an academic undergraduate degree awarded to a student after three to five years of studying engineering at an accredited college or university. In the UK, a Bache ...

in Chemical Engineering and also obtained a certificate in Spanish and Portuguese Language and Culture in 2007. Farouk went on to earn her Medical Degree (M.D.) from

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in 2012 with a Distinction in Research. In 2015, she finished her internship and internal medicine residency at ISMMS in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. During her time at Rutgers, she had planned to go into

cardiology Cardiology () is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular heart d ...

, but gained a passion for

nephrology Nephrology (from Greek'' nephros'' "kidney", combined with the suffix ''-logy'', "the study of") is a specialty of adult internal medicine and pediatric medicine that concerns the study of the kidneys, specifically normal kidney function (ren ...

after working with nephrology mentors and treating patients with kidney disease during her residency. She completed her Nephrology Fellowship and Transplant Fellowship before earning a Master of Science (M.S.) in

Clinical Research Clinical research is a branch of healthcare science that determines the safety and effectiveness ( efficacy) of medications, devices, diagnostic products and treatment regimens intended for human use. These may be used for prevention, treatm ...

also at the Icahn School of Medicine. Her dissertation, published in 2019, investigated how

T-cell A T cell is a type of lymphocyte. T cells are one of the important white blood cells of the immune system and play a central role in the adaptive immune response. T cells can be distinguished from other lymphocytes by the presence of a T-cell rec ...

function is regulated by

hematopoietic Haematopoiesis (, from Greek , 'blood' and 'to make'; also hematopoiesis in American English; sometimes also h(a)emopoiesis) is the formation of blood cellular components. All cellular blood components are derived from haematopoietic stem cells. ...

cell

kinase In biochemistry, a kinase () is an enzyme that catalyzes the transfer of phosphate groups from high-energy, phosphate-donating molecules to specific substrates. This process is known as phosphorylation, where the high-energy ATP molecule don ...

in kidney disease. After serving as Chief Fellow at Sinai, she now serves as the Associate Program Director of the Nephrology Fellowship Program.

Career

Farouk is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Education at ISMMS. She teaches residents, fellows and medical students while serving as associate director of the Nephrology Fellowship Program. Her passion for teaching began during her internship, but increased throughout her nephrology residency and also after joining the Nephrology Social Media Collective (NSMC). Farouk realized the global impact education had on the medical community after working with free open access medical education (FOAMed) through NSMC and cofounding NephSIM, a virtual nephrology teaching tool, alongside Dr. Rachel Hillburg. In 2018, NephSIM won the American Society of Nephrology Innovations (ASN) in Kidney Education Contest, and in 2020 Farouk was awarded the William and Sandra Bennett Clinical Scholars Grant to implement and study its impact on medical student education. Farouk is also cofounder and social media director of the SIM series, a set of virtual learning and teaching tools for different medical disciplines. Among them are NephSIM, Neuro SIM, GI SIM, and 20/20 SIM, which use case-based study to teach Nephrology,

Neurology Neurology (from el, wikt:νεῦρον, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine), medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of co ...

Gastroenterology Gastroenterology (from the Greek gastḗr- “belly”, -énteron “intestine”, and -logía "study of") is the branch of medicine focused on the digestive system and its disorders. The digestive system consists of the gastrointestinal tract ...

Hepatology Hepatology is the branch of medicine that incorporates the study of liver, gallbladder, biliary tree, and pancreas as well as management of their disorders. Although traditionally considered a sub-specialty of gastroenterology, rapid expansion ...

, and

Ophthalmology Ophthalmology ( ) is a surgical subspecialty within medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders. An ophthalmologist is a physician who undergoes subspecialty training in medical and surgical eye care. Following a medic ...

, respectively. Farouk is now dedicated to further studying and developing educational tools like NephSIM, and aims to implement them into medical school curricula. In addition to her roles as an educator, Farouk also treats transplant patients with clinical focuses on chronic kidney disease, kidney injury, and transplant care among others.

Social media and mentorship

On top of her occupations as an educator, practicing physician, and clinical researcher, Farouk serves as social media director of the nephrology division at Mount Sinai and is an active nephrology and transplant advocate on social media, particularly

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. Farouk is also a member of the ASN media and communications committee. In 2019, Farouk played an integral role in the success of KIDNEYcon by introducing free open access medical education (FOAMed), innovating aspects of mentorship, and organizing multiple of the conference's activities. In April 2019, Farouk joined the KIDNEYcon team as Director of Mentoring and Trainee Engagement, taking on more coordination and mentorship responsibilities for the 2020 conference. Farouk is also an executive board member of the Nephrology Social Media Collective (NSMC). Within NSMC, she is co-editor of the Renal Fellow Network, and previous member of nephrology

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

"Freely Filtered" hosted through the Nephrology Journal Club, "NephJC". The journal club discusses research and editorials surrounding nephrology, and uses Twitter as its primary platform to do so. She is also executive board member and organizer of the annual NephMadness event held by the

American Journal of Kidney Diseases The ''American Journal of Kidney Diseases'' (AJKD) is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering all aspects of nephrology. It is the official journal of the National Kidney Foundation and is published by Elsevier. The journal publishes o ...

. Based on MarchMadness, the initiative uses disciplines in kidney medicine for the brackets, and overall aims to increase education of nephrology. Farouk is also on the 2021 executive committee of Trainee and Young Faculty Community of Practice, an American Society of Transplantation initiative to provide younger faculty with mentorship and research opportunities. She aims to be a mentor to aspiring clinician educators and to inspire the next generation of physicians to consider careers in nephrology.

Select publications

*Farouk, S. S., & Rein, J. L. (2020). "The Many Faces of Calcineurin Inhibitor Toxicity-What the FK?". ''Advances in chronic kidney disease'', ''27''(1), 56–66. *Farouk, S. S., Hilburg, R., & Sparks, M. A. (2019). "Design, Dissemination, and Assessment of NephSIM: A Mobile-Optimized Nephrology Teaching Tool." ''Journal of graduate medical education'', ''11''(6), 708–712. *Ramakrishnan, M., Sparks, M. A., & Farouk, S. S. (2020). "Training the Public Physician: The Nephrology Social Media Collective Internship." ''Seminars in nephrology'', ''40''(3), 320–327. *Cravedi, Paolo; Mothi, Suraj S.; Azzi, Yorg; Haverly, Meredith; Farouk, Samira S.; Pérez‐Sáez, María J.; Redondo‐Pachón, Maria D.; Murphy, Barbara; Florman, Sander; Cyrino, Laura G.; Grafals, Monica (2020-08-04). "COVID‐19 and kidney transplantation: Results from the TANGO International Transplant Consortium". ''American Journal of Transplantation''. 20 (11): 3140–3148. . . * Hilburg, Rachel; Patel, Niralee; Ambruso, Sophia; Biewald, Mollie A.; Farouk, Samira S. (2020-09). "Medical Education During the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Pandemic: Learning From a Distance". ''Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease''. 27 (5): 412–417. . .

Awards

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Farouk, Samira American nephrologists Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai faculty Rutgers University alumni Living people American women scientists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women