Dr. Polonsky is a prominent diabetes researcher, physician and educator who most recently served as the Adolphus Busch professor and chair of the department of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as physician-in-chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Commenting on Dr. Polonsky’s appointment this month, university provost Thomas Rosenbaum said, “Kenneth Polonsky’s deep knowledge and embrace of the intellectual values of the University make him the perfect partner as we strive to attract the most talented research scientists, clinicians and educators to Chicago. We are excited to have him back.”
In a March interview with Today’s Machining World, Dr. Polonsky talked about exciting developments on the horizon of diabetes research. “I think the most encouraging thing is that we’re relatively close to very important understandings of why we develop the disease,” he said. “We’ve understood it at a certain level, but now we’re going to be able to understand the specific proteins that are abnormal, the biochemical pathways that are involved and the genetic abnormalities that are responsible. It wouldn’t be surprising if within the next 5-10 years, at least in understanding how the disease develops, there were major breakthroughs. That’s likely to be the first step in developing better treatments.”
As a researcher, Dr. Polonsky studies the factors that influence the health and function of pancreatic beta cells, which produce and secret insulin. Defects in insulin production and action are signs of type 2 diabetes, and during his tenure as a University of Chicago professor and researcher, Dr. Polonsky helped develop and test ways to measure insulin-secretion rates.
More recently, Dr. Polonsky has focused on novel, sensitive and accurate methods of evaluating beta-cell function in patients with mild diabetes of as-of-yet undeveloped diabetes, as well as forms of diabetes that result from genetics. Dr. Polonsky has been a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies since 2006 and won the highly selective National Institutes of Health MERIT Award in 1997. In 2009, he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
Dr. Polonsky received his MD from the University of Witwatersrand Medical School in Johannesburg and completed his residency in internal medicine at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago. He undertook a fellowship in endocrinology at the University of Chicago in 1978.
Read more on notable hospital leaders:
–Hospital Leader to Know: Richard Umbdenstock of the AHA
–Hospital Leader to Know: Jeff Brickman of Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center
