“…scientists like Dr. Parker foster the creative and collaborative intellectual environment that propels diabetes research at Michigan.” Martin Myers, MD, PhD, Director of the Caswell Diabetes Institute
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) has awarded CDI faculty member, Stephen C.J. Parker, PhD, with their Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award for 2024! This award is one of the ADA's National Scientific and Health Care Achievement Awards that honor academics, health care providers, and educators who have made substantial contributions to advancing diabetes care and research.
The Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award recognizes diabetes research that demonstrates particular independence of thought and originality. According to the ADA announcement, "Dr. Parker has been a leader in the field and has made several notable discoveries that link context-specific epigenome signatures to diabetes genetic predisposition and have revealed a convergence of rare coding and common regulatory genetic variation on diabetes transcriptional regulatory networks."
Stephen Parker, PhD, is an associate professor of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics and Human Genetics. In addition to receiving this prestigious award, he was recently announced as the director of the new Epigenomic Metabolic Medicine Center (EM2C) at the U-M Medical School. The center will perform population population-scale single-cell multi-omics profiling with the goal of better understanding how genetic variations contribute to common, complex diseases, such as diabetes and related traits.
According to Martin Myers, MD, PhD, Director of the Caswell Diabetes Institute (CDI) and the 2010 Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award recipient, “Not only does this award represent a fitting recognition of Dr. Parker’s important work using advanced genetic techniques to understand the pathogenesis of Type 2 diabetes, but it also reflects the strength of diabetes research at Michigan.” Myers goes on to state, “ Dr. Parker represents the fourth U-M faculty member to receive the American Diabetes Association Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (OSAA) in the past 15 years, and Michigan has more OSAA awardees than any other institution in the world. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course, because scientists like Dr. Parker foster the creative and collaborative intellectual environment that propels diabetes research at Michigan.”
Parker is one of eight recipients to be formally recognized at the awards ceremony at the ADA's 84th Scientific Sessions scheduled for June 21-24 in Orlando, Florida.
Congratulations on this remarkable accomplishment, Dr. Parker!