Dr. Leaf grew up in Westchester, NY, and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He completed medical school at New York University, graduating with honors, followed by residency training in internal medicine at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. He completed fellowship training in nephrology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. During fellowship, Dr. Leaf trained in the laboratory of Dr. Sushrut Waikar and earned a Master of Medical Science (MMSc) degree in Clinical Investigation from Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Leaf conducts patient-oriented research focused on acute kidney injury (AKI) and critical illness. His work integrates epidemiologic, translational, and interventional approaches to address clinically important questions in patients with AKI. Current areas of investigation include dysregulated iron homeostasis and NAD+ metabolism as novel pathogenic pathways and therapeutic targets in AKI, nephrotoxicity of cancer therapies, development of noninvasive methods for diagnosing acute interstitial nephritis, and epidemiologic studies in critically ill patients with AKI requiring continuous renal replacement therapy.
Dr. Leaf is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Clinical and Translational Research in Acute Kidney Injury in the Division of Renal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2013, serving as principal investigator on F32, K23, and four recent or ongoing R01/U01 grants. He is an Associate Editor at the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, where he oversees clinical and translational AKI submissions, and previously served as member of the Mass General Brigham Institutional Review Board. His work has been published in leading medical journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The BMJ, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, Nature Medicine, and Journal of Clinical Investigation, and has been featured in national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and Scientific American.
Dr. Leaf is deeply committed to academic nephrology and mentorship and has received research and teaching awards from NYU, Columbia, and Harvard. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two children, as well as traveling, skiing, swimming, and playing chess.