Dr. Rexford Ahima is currently Professor of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing, and the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Diabetes at Johns Hopkins University. He is also director of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Ahima received his MD from the University of Ghana Medical School, and PhD in neuroscience from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. He completed internship and residency training in Internal Medicine at the Jacobi and Jack Weiler Hospitals, Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and clinical and research fellowships in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He joined Harvard faculty, moved to the University of Pennsylvania and rose through the ranks to tenured Professor of Medicine. He also served as the director of the Obesity Unit of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, and the founding director of the Diabetes Research Center Mouse Phenotyping Core, and Penn Metabolic Medicine. Dr. Ahima’s research focuses on the CNS and peripheral actions of adipokines mediating obesity, diabetes and related diseases. His clinical interests also focus on obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Dr. Ahima has authored more than 200 articles, a book on obesity, and edited 4 books and 8 series on obesity and diabetes. He has lectured in national and international conferences, served as editor-in-chief for the Journal of Clinical Investigation, associate editor for Gastroenterology, Endocrinology, Molecular Endocrinology, Endocrine Reviews, and on committees of the National Institutes of Health, the Endocrine Society, and other organizations. Dr. Ahima is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
