Nora Franceschini

Nora Franceschini, MD, MPH, FAHA is a Professor of Epidemiology and Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research focuses on environmental and genetic determinants of hypertension, kidney, and cardiovascular diseases, with a particular emphasis on global populations. She leads the COGENT Kidney Consortium and has authored over 300 publications, including recent studies on genetic testing for kidney disease, epigenetic diversity, and ancestral biomarkers. Her work integrates multi-omics data and examines social/environmental contexts of genetic variants.

Dr. Franceschini has been recognized with awards such as the CHARGE Tiger Leadership Award (2019) and the Trudy Bush Fellowship (2018). She volunteers with the National Kidney Foundation’s Kidney Health programs and teaches courses on kidney disease epidemiology. Key contributions include discoveries in APOL1 risk genotypes and gene-environment interactions in chronic diseases.