Head of Department and Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine, Department of Clinical Biochemistry, University of Cambridge

Professor O'Rahilly is the Head of Department and a Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine in the Department of Clinical Biochemistry. He is also Co-Director of the Institute of Metabolic Science. He graduated in Medicine from University College Dublin and went on to do an internship at the Mater Hospital. From 1982-1991 he undertook postgraduate training in general medicine and endocrinology and in diabetes research in London, Oxford and Harvard.

In 1991 he established his own laboratory in the University of Cambridge at Addenbrooke's Hospital where he was a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in Clinical Science, and in 1996 he was appointed to a newly created Chair of Metabolic Medicine and in 2002 was appointed to the Chair of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine at the University of Cambridge.

He has a long-standing interest in the aetiology and pathophysiology of human metabolic and endocrine disease and how such information might be used to improve diagnosis, prognostication, therapy and prevention. He is the Principal Investigator on an MRC Programme Grant focused on Molecular and Pathophysiological Mechanisms in Obesity and also on a Wellcome Trust Programme Grant focused on Mechanisms of Human Insulin Resistance.

He has won many awards for his work including the Society for Endocrinology Medal, the European Journal of Endocrinology Prize, the Novartis International Award for Clinical Research in Diabetes, the Heinrich Wieland Prize, the Rolf Luft Award, the Feldberg Prize, the Society for Endocrinology Dale Medal and the InBev Baillet-Latour Prize for Health.

He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2000, to the Royal Society in 2003 and to the US National Academy of Sciences as a Foreign Associate in 2011. While maintaining a large research laboratory he continues to be actively involved in clinical practice and the teaching of clinical medical students.