Biography

Ralph A. DeFronzo, MD, is Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Diabetes Division at University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSCSA) and Deputy Director of Texas Diabetes Institute, San Antonio, Texas. Dr. DeFronzo is a graduate of Yale University (BS) and Harvard Medical School (MD) and did his training in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He completed fellowships in Endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health and Nephrology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He was an Assistant and then Associate faculty member at Yale University School of Medicine from 1975-1988. From 1988 to present Dr. DeFronzo has been Professor of Medicine at UTHSCSA. His major interests are the pathogenesis and treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and his work has been instrumental in defining the biochemical and molecular disturbances responsible for T2DM. For his work, Dr. DeFronzo received the prestigious Lilly Award (1987) by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the Banting Lectureship (1988) by the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Novartis Award (2003) for outstanding clinical investigation worldwide, the ADA’s Albert Renold Award (2002) for lifetime commitment to training young diabetes investigators, and many other national/international awards. Dr. DeFronzo received the Banting Award again from the ADA (2008) and the Claude Bernard Award from EASD (2008), the highest scientific achievement awards given by the American and European Diabetes Associations, respectively. In 2008 Dr. DeFronzo received the Italian Diabetes Mentor Prize and the Philip Bondy Lecture at Yale. With more than 700 articles in peer-reviewed medical journals, Dr. DeFronzo is a distinguished clinician, teacher, and investigator who has been an invited speaker at major national and international conferences on diabetes mellitus.

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