John Kirwan, director of the Metabolic Translational Research Center and professor of molecular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, has been named the executive director of LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, the university’s announced today.
The hiring of Kirwan—who has more than 30 years of research, teaching, and service in the obesity and diabetes fields—is subject to approval by the LSU Board of Supervisors.
“His exceptional record of excellence in diabetes-related research, including the discovery that the disease can sometimes be cured by surgical alteration of the stomach, makes him the perfect fit for Pennington Biomedical,” LSU President F. King Alexander says in a statement.
In addition to serving at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Kirwan also is a professor of physiology and of nutrition at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland.
He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Limerick in Ireland; a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and a Ph.D. in human bioenergetics from Ball State University in Indiana.
He follows former Pennington executive director William Cefalu, who left the post earlier this year to become chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association. Donna Ryan, an obesity researcher, physician and professor emerita at Pennington Biomedical, has been serving as executive director in the interim.
