Faculty Expert Profile

A world-renowned physician-scientist, Rexford Ahima is known for uncovering connections between diabetes and obesity. As the leader of the Johns Hopkins Diabetes Initiative, Ahima strives to apply his crosscutting expertise from basic and translational research to the clinic and populations.

Ahima's research is focused on the interrelationship between energy stores and regulation of feeding, energy balance and endocrine systems by the brain, as well as on glucose and lipid metabolism. He is interested in how adipokines and other circulating factors target the brain and peripheral organs to control feeding and metabolism, and the implications of these circulating factors for treatment and prevention of obesity and diabetes. Ahima's research is at the interface of metabolism dysfunction and diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, inflammatory diseases, cancer, aging, and other conditions, and contributes to evolving policies and practices for clinical care, education, and research in diabetes and weight management.

Ahima joined Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in 2016 from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the director of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; and Professor of Medicine; Public Health; and Nursing.