Kenneth Kalunian, MD Board Chair

Kenneth Kalunian, M.D., is a rheumatologist and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. He graduated from Occidental College magna cum laude and from St. Louis University School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship at UCLA, where he was on faculty until transitioning to UC San Diego. His background is in basic research in lupus nephritis and is currently active as a translational and clinical scientist with special interests in outcomes and clinical trial design. Locally, he co-directs the UC San Diego Center for Innovative Therapy and has recently developed and is the director of the UC San Diego Lupus Center of Excellence, which is a bench- and clinical- science research hub as well as a multi-disciplinary center for care of complicated lupus patients. He is a former president of the Southern California Rheumatology Society. Nationally, he was the inaugural chair of LuCIN, a national academic network comprised of lupus clinical scientists at 57 academic centers. Additionally, he started the Lupus Foundation of America (LFA)-sponsored Collective Data Analysis Initiative (CDAI) and served as its first director. He has served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of both the LRA and the LFA and has been on several grant review committees for NIAMS.