Director
Rexford S. Ahima, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism
Director of Obesity Unit, Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism
Director of Diabetes Research Center Mouse Phenotyping Core
Office: 12-104 TRC, Translational Research Center
Tel: 215-573-1872
Fax: 215-746-8931
Email: ahima@mail.med.upenn.edu
Dr. Ahima is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He received a BSc from the University of London, MD from the University of Ghana, and PhD from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. After his internship and residency in internal medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Jack D. Weiler Hospital and Jacobi Medical Center, in the Bronx, New York, Dr. Ahima did his subspecialty training in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School in Boston, and a research fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier. Dr. Ahima served as an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard prior to moving to Penn in 1999.
Dr. Ahima received an Owl Club Teaching Award at Tulane University School of Medicine, Leo Davidoff Award at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Pfizer Postdoctoral Award at Harvard Medical School, and the Albert Stunkard Founder's Award at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), and the Association of American Physicians (AAP), and a fellow of the American College of Physicians (ACP), the Obesity Society (TOS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Ahima has served as a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Foundation of the United Kingdom, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and as a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). He has served as an associate editor of Gastroenterology, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation, edited three books on obesity and metabolism, and is currently an editor of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Year in Diabetes and Obesity, and Molecular Endocrinology.
Dr. Ahima is a member of the Endocrine Society Obesity Taskforce, and the NIDDK Clinical Obesity Research Panel. His research is focused on central and peripheral regulation of energy homeostasis, and glucose and lipid metabolism. He is interested in how adipocyte hormones, myokines and other circulating factors act in the brain and other organs. These studies have important implications for the pathophysiology of obesity and diabetes, and utilize mouse models, chemical and immunoassays, in vivo metabolic studies, neurochemistry, and tissue culture techniques. Dr. Ahima is also the director of the Penn Diabetes Research Center Mouse Phenotyping Core. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, and Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, an attending endocrinologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and the director of the Obesity Unit of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.