Aidan Wilder Porter, MD

Dr. Porter is entering his final year of fellowship in the Division of Nephrology at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where he previously completed his residency in General Pediatrics. A native of New England, Dr. Porter graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College and earned his medical degree from the William Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, RI. 

Dr. Porter, in collaboration with a pediatric intensivist colleague, is combining his interest in acute kidney injury and in medical education to create an interactive, multidisciplinary curriculum to train ICU and nephrology fellows in the use of continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT), a treatment often necessary to sustain critically ill children with renal insufficiency.  Dr. Porter anticipates that this simulation-based training will lead to tangible improvements in the standardization and quality of CRRT, contributing to measurably better patient outcomes. 

Dr. Porter’s laboratory research is focused on the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR), an intracellular “quality control” process governing the recycling of aberrant proteins. While UPR defects are implicated in a number of diseases, Dr. Porter is studying how loss of a particular molecular chaperone impairs waste excretion and salt and water homeostasis in the renal tubules leading to acute kidney injury. 

Professional and Scientific Society Memberships

• American Academy of Pediatrics 
• American Society of Pediatric Nephrology (Fellow in Training)
• National Kidney Foundation (Fellow in Training)
• Pennsylvania Medical Society