#NephMadness 2025: The Winners
NephMadness 2025 brought us the both the most competitive matchups and brackets in our illustrious history. Team CAR-T for Autoimmune Diseases from the CAR-T for Kidney Disease Region was eventually crowned champion, and we are excited to announce this year’s prizewinners below!
Grand Prizes
Each Grand Prize individual winner will receive a one-year online subscription to Advances in Kidney Disease and Health and Nature Reviews Nephrology.
TOP OVERALL SCORE: Yara Mouawad
Yara Mouawad is a second-year nephrology fellow at the University of Texas Houston. She graduated from the LAU Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine and completed her residency at Baton Rouge Medical Center in Baton Rouge, LA. Her areas of interest include glomerular diseases, kidney disorders during pregnancy, and medical education. She wrote this year’s CAR-T for Kidney Disease Region, and you can hear her talking all about it on this episode of the RheumMadness podcast.
TOP MEDICAL STUDENT SCORE: Linh Luong
“I am a 4th year medical student at Virginia Commonwealth University. This was my first time participating in the NephMadness and I love its spirit in collaboration and bringing everyone who are interested in Nephrology together. I also enjoyed learning about the topics and discussing them with my NephSIM team members. Thank you to those who organized the event!”
TOP RESIDENT SCORE: Claudia Villegas @claudia52558483
“I’m so excited to be part of NephMadness 2025! Right now, I’m a third-year nephrology resident at the Centro Médico Nacional de Occidente IMSS, in Guadalajara, Jalisco – Mexico. My favorite part of NephMadness is predicting which topics will have the biggest impact on medicine in the coming years—and hoping my picks end up winning!”
TOP FELLOW SCORE: Christel Wekon-Kemeni @therealdrdub – @therealdrdub.bsky.social
“My favorite thing about NephMadness is the competitive spirit that we all exhibit during this time of the year. It is really cool to see nephrologists, fellows, residents, and medical students across the world participate in this fun competition while we all learn about all sorts of interesting and exciting developments in our field! I’m also a HUGE fan of March Madness, so I was instantly hooked on NephMadness after first learning about it several years ago! I submit brackets for March Madness every year, so it only felt right to also submit brackets for NephMadness to enjoy the thrill of chasing that elusive perfect bracket. My division also used one of our weekly didactic sessions to create a bracket together, which resulted in lively and entertaining discussions about the various topics we learned about on the scouting reports! Although our group bracket didn’t make it to the top (we will one day!), I’m really excited about winning the Top Fellow Score this year! Much thanks to everyone who plays a role in making NephMadness an enjoyable experience every single year!”
TOP ATTENDING SCORE: William Whittier @TWhittier_RUSH – @nephrowhitt.bsky.social
“Nephmadness is the perfect opportunity to get the most up to date information on controversial modern topics in nephrology. But most importantly, Nephmadness does it in a fun way that keeps students from all walks of life engaged! It is the ideal educational platform. “
Social Prizes
BEST BLOGGER: Swapnil Hiremath @hswapnil – @hswapnil.medsky.social
“My favorite part of NephMadness? Shitposting and arguing on BlueSky on other people choices. And criticizing the BRP (as the originator of #BlueRibbonFail hashtag when the 2016 BRP ignored my scouting report clear narrative to choose BP for kidneys).
Insights into writing my commentary, “Renal Denervation in Hypertension: Fad or Fixture?“: thinking about the story I am trying to tell over days/weeks and putting into paper the night before the deadline. A glass of your favorite inebriating spirit is helpful as well.”
BEST SOCIAL MEDIA POSTER: Sarah Melville @sarahkmels – @sarahkmels.bsky.social
“My favorite part about NephMadness is the fun, collegial discussions & debates online and in-person about each of the topics. The evidence-based summary reports with key references and the podcasts are helpful educational resources. I often refer back to topic summary reports throughout the year and from past NephMadness years. At our Nephrology-Hypertension Centre in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, we started participating in NephMadness in 2017 with 3 people and it has grown with over 20 people participating at our NephMadness Party this year. We discuss the NephMadness topics for our monthly journal club meeting. Thank you to Dr. Sparks and Dr. Farouk and to the other members of the NephMadness Executive Team for an exceptionally great educational nephrology-hypertension annual tradition that sets the tone for the rest of the year.”
Got 18 #NephMadness group brackets submitted with 11 minutes to spare!, 🤓🙏Let the praying to the #BlueRibbonPanel Gods begin… 🙏🤞
— Sarah Melville (@sarahkmels.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T04:04:19.372Z
Group Prizes
HIGHEST-SCORING GROUP: Gliflozistene OFFICIAL
“We are fans of social media in nephrology, and are avid followers of the Freely Filtered and Channel Your Enthusiasm podcasts, where we first heard about NephMadness. We have tried to use it for educational purposes during our lunch meetings, where the brackets offer quick but accurate takes on the hottest topics in nephrology. Thanks for an excellent competition – and see you next year!” – Marius Altern Øvrehus
BEST PARTY AND MOST ENTRIES GROUP: HGM Nefrología @hgm_nefrologia – @hgmnefrologia.bsky.social
“For the past two years, we have become very enthusiastic about participating in NephMadness, and since the Nephrology fellowship starts in March, it’s the perfect opportunity for our new fellows to integrate with the rest of the group. At the beginning of March, Dr. Fuentes @laufuentesm gave us a talk about what NephMadness is and how we should fill out our bracketology.
Inspired by this year’s logo, one of our senior fellows, @AranzaJoffre, came up with the idea to theme each gathering around the “Back to the Future” movies. We hosted three parties based on the 50s, the Future, and the Old West, creating nephrology-related stories inspired by the films. This led to such fun moments as Marty McFly playing at the prom, a Nephroalmanac, and even a cowboy fight. We invited the transplant fellows to make the nephrology party bigger. At the end of each party, we voted for the winning themes, and at the third party, the winner was decided. On the last day of March, we were reminded to submit our brackets for both fellows and attendings.
This activity unites us as fellows, and we will continue to participate every year. We love seeing what other teams come up with, and the creativity from everyone truly shines. See you next year!”
– Dr. Eduaro Liceaga, Hospital General de México
If this looks familiar, it may be because HGM Nefrologia won Best Part and Most Entries last year. Don’t know about you, but I feel like taking a trip to Mexico for next year’s parties!
Honorable Mentions:
Melanie Hoenig and Tiffany Caza also tied with Yara Mouawad for the Top Overall score. Dr Hoenig is the AJKD Core Curriculum Editor and ineligible to win, and we used tie-breaker rules to decide between the remaining two.
Congratulations to The Winners of NephMadness 2025!
Special thanks to Sarah Pratta from Elsevier and Susan Allison from NRN for the complimentary subscriptions to Advances in Kidney Disease and Health and Nature Reviews Nephrology.
There were four prize categories where we needed to break a tie: Top Overall, Top Medical Student, Top Attending, and Top Resident. For more details on how tiebreakers work specifically and the determination of winners and prizes in general, please see NephMadness 2025 Rules.
Final Standings | Match Results | #NephMadness | #NephMadness 
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