Seung Kim, MD, PhD

Director of Stanford Diabetes Research Center; KM Mulberry Professor, Department of Developmental Biology and Department of Medicine, Stanford University

Seung Kim received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1985 and his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1992. While training at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, he met his wife, Dr. Nancy Plauth. They have four children. He was a Medical Oncology Fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute from 1994-98, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Fellow at Harvard University from 1995-1998.

Dr. Kim has been a faculty member at Stanford University School of Medicine since 1998 and holds the KM Mulberry endowed chair. He is a Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology, in the Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), and by courtesy in Pediatrics (Endocrinology). His laboratory has discovered genes, signals and cell interactions governing development and function of pancreatic islets. This involves experimental systems including mice, fruit flies, pigs and human tissues or stem cell lines. These discoveries have led to new approaches for creating, expanding, and replacing pancreatic islets in diabetes. Recently, his work with Stanford colleagues has identified translatable strategies for durably inducing immune tolerance of transplanted islets and diabetes reversal in mice, detailed today in a presentation by Preksha Bhagchandani. In 2016, together with his colleagues, he founded the Stanford Diabetes Research Center (SDRC), and since that time has directed it. The SDRC now also includes members from the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, and from UC Davis. He also co-directs the Stanford Pancreas Cancer Research Group, and the JDRF Northern California Center of Excellence at Stanford. From 2000 to 2013, he served as co-director or director of the Stanford MSTP. He also founded Stan-X in 2011, a unique program for creating science curricula in secondary schools and universities worldwide. In addition to multiple teaching awards, Dr. Kim has received honors for his scientific achievements, including selection as an Investigator in the HHMI in 2008, the Gerald and Kayla Grodsky Award for Basic Research Excellence from JDRF in 2013, the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine in 2014, and election to the Association of American Physicians (AAP) in 2021.