Tarek Ashkar is a professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine working in the Division of Nephrology. He is a physician scientist studying various aspects of kidney diseases.Ashkar says the Human BioMolecular Atlas Program, or HuBMAP is a consortium supported by the NIH Common Fund. Its objective is to map the molecular landscape of healthy cells and the microenvironment in the entire human body, including the kidneys, to understand the relationship between cellular organization and health. The Kidney Precision Medicine Project is a multi-year collaboration between leading institutions in the U.S. to study patients with kidney disease. The goal of the KPMP is to better understand the mechanism of kidney disease by determining the precise molecular pathways that will help to better define disease and identify novel therapeutic targets that will allow individualized care. Ashkar’s team has been involved in both of these consortia and have formed a link between the two. In this work, they have defined a comprehensive atlas of the cells in healthy kidneys, as well as cells from people with kidney diseases such as acute kidney injury, chronic kidney disease, and stone disease. They identify different cell states and unique interactions between various cells that occur in kidney diseases. Understanding the cellular and molecular complexity allows Ashkar’s team to identify key biological pathways that determine whether the kidneys repair themselves after injury.