Kim E. Barrett

Professor Kim E. Barrett is a native of the United Kingdom, and obtained her B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees (in Medicinal Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, respectively) from University College London.  Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she joined the faculty of the University of California (UC) San Diego in 1985, was promoted to Full Professor in 1996, and advanced to the rank of Distinguished Professor of Medicine in 2015.  From 2006-2016, she additionally served as Dean of the Graduate Division at UC San Diego.  In this capacity, she oversaw the recruitment, academic advancement and climate for more than 5000 masters and doctoral students.  She also served as the rotating Director of the Division of Graduate Education at the US National Science Foundation from 2020-2021.  Since November 2021, she has been Distinguished Professor of Physiology and Membrane Biology and Vice Dean for Research in the School of Medicine at UC Davis, where she is leading initiatives to bolster both basic and clinical research activities.  With support from the NIH and private foundations, her own research interests have centered on the physiology and pathophysiology of the intestinal epithelium and their relevance to inflammatory bowel diseases and diarrheal diseases, and have resulted in more than 300 publications.  Her scientific accomplishments have also garnered a number of awards and other recognitions, including the Bayliss/Starling Lectureship of The Physiological Society, the Bowditch, Davenport and Ussing Lectureships of the American Physiological Society, receipt of the degree of Doctor of Medical Science, honoris causa, from Queens University Belfast, the Distinguished Achievement in Basic Science award from the American Gastroenterological Association, and election as a Fellow of the International Union of Physiological Sciences.  She is a Past-President of the American Physiological Society and is currently serving as Councilor-at-Large on the Governing Board of the American Gastroenterological Association.  She has also been highly active in scholarly publishing, and completed a six-year term as Editor-in-Chief for The Journal of Physiology in 2022.