The 2022 ACR Awards of Distinction

She co-directs the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute-funded PerMIPA (Personalized medicine through integration of immune phenotypes in autoimmune skin diseases) cohort with her collaborator, Johann Gudjonsson, MD, PhD, to deeply and longitudinally phenotype lupus and psoriasis patients with the goal of improved understanding of disease pathophysiology and eventual implementation of personalized medicine implementation for autoimmune disease patients. 

Dr. Kahlenberg has served the ACR through membership on the Early Career Investi­gators subcommittee of the Research Committee from 2013 to 2018, and has served on the Scientific Advisory Council for the Rheumatology Research Foundation since 2020. She was also a co-chair of the Innate Immunity Abstract Session for the 2019–21 ACR meetings. Dr. Kahlenberg also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Arthritis National Research Foundation and as an advisor for the Lupus Clinical Investigators Network’s Committee for Candidate Drug Vetting. She is a standing member of the NIH Hypersensitivity, Autoimmune, and Immune-mediated Diseases Study Section.

Her work has received institutional accolades and national recognition from the Arthritis National Research Foundation, the Rheumatology Research Foundation, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Lupus Foundation of America. In addition, she was the recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2019. 

“I am grateful and honored to be named a 2022 ACR Henry Kunkel Early Career Investigator awardee. This award keeps impressive company—the careers and impact of the previous awardees, including three past University of Michigan faculty, have been tremendous,” Dr. Kahlenberg says. “I am especially touched by the fact that Mariana Kaplan won this award in 2010, the year that I joined her lab as a second-year fellow. I am looking forward to continuing our systemic and cutaneous lupus research and living up to the legacy of this award.”

 Distinguished Fellowship Program Director Award

She has mentored many residents and fellows through education-related academic projects; several Duke fellowship graduates have focused on education in their careers.

At Duke, she was one of the inaugural mentors for the Education Scholars branch of the departmental faculty development academy and led this branch for several years. She created “education lab meetings” across the Duke Department of Medicine to enhance training in education research methodology and encourage networking and collaboration. In 2020, she became the vice chair for education in the Duke University Department of Medicine. Taking on this new role led her to pass the baton of fellowship program director to a new leader in summer 2022.