Rexford Ahima Named Director of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism

To the Johns Hopkins Medicine community

Dear Colleagues:

We are delighted to announce that Rexford Ahima will join Johns Hopkins Medicine as the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Diabetes, director of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, and leader of the Diabetes Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Ahima will join Johns Hopkins on June 1, and will work closely with our faculty and staff to advance the division's clinical and research programs and to educate the next generation of endocrine health experts.

Dr. Ahima is currently a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Additionally, he serves as director of the Obesity Unit in the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, and as director of the Penn Diabetes Research Center's Mouse Phenotyping, Physiology and Metabolism Core.

Research in Dr. Ahima's laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania has focused on the relationship between energy stores and the regulation of energy balance by the brain, and how adipokines, myokines, cytokines and other circulating factors act in the brain and other organs. When he joins Johns Hopkins, Dr. Ahima will continue his research in a new laboratory that is located on the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center campus.

Board certified in internal medicine, endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, Dr. Ahima did his intercalated BSc research training in endocrinology at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in the University of London, and earned his M.D. from the University of Ghana Medical School, and his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Tulane University. After his Ph.D., he completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York before completing research and clinical fellowship training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and joining the faculty at the Harvard Medical School.

Having published extensively in his field, he is a frequent speaker nationally and abroad. He has published more than 200 articles, reviews and abstracts in peer-reviewed journals; authored and edited several books on obesity, diabetes and metabolism; and serves on numerous academic and institutional committees.  He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

We appreciate the diligence of the search committee, chaired by David Thomas, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases, which conducted a nationwide search before enthusiastically recommending Dr. Ahima.

Dr. Ahima will be a wonderful addition to Johns Hopkins Medicine. His experience will be instrumental in helping us advance the work in this important field. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Ahima and his family to Baltimore and Johns Hopkins in June.

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Mark E. Anderson, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Department of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine