Alvin Powers, M.D., director of the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center, has been named president-elect, Medicine and Science, of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) for 2016.
When Powers begins his one-year term as president next year, he will be the fourth Vanderbilt faculty member to serve as president of the nation’s largest voluntary diabetes organization. The others are the late Addison Scoville Jr., M.D., Oscar Crofford Jr., M.D., and Alan Cherrington, Ph.D.
“It is an honor and privilege to serve as the president of the ADA and to be part of its efforts to prevent diabetes and to improve the lives of individuals with diabetes,” said Powers, the Joe C. Davis Professor of Biomedical Science.
Powers also is professor of Medicine and of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, chief of the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, and director of the Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center.
His research focuses on understanding how glucose stimulates insulin secretion by pancreatic beta cells — and on characterizing and reversing the abnormalities in this process that are present in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
Powers has been an ADA member since 1986, and was appointed to the Board of Directors in 2014.
