George King, MD

Dr. George L. King is the Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer at Joslin Diabetes Center, as well as a professor of medicine and ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. He received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine and did his residency at the University of Washington Affiliated Hospitals in Seattle and the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. King has published over 300 papers and multiple books. Dr. King’s work focuses on finding the causes of diabetic complications. He is the founder of The Medalist Study to discover new treatments for diabetic complications and understanding the reasons for the high rate of diabetes in Asian Americans. His laboratory discovered that VEGF, the protein most responsible for causing the severe form of diabetic eye disease.

Dr. King has received numerous awards: the Cogan Award from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology; the Alcon Award for Vision Research; the Harold Amos Diversity Award from Harvard Medical School; the Chinese American Medical Society Scientific Award; the 2015 Edwin Bierman Award from the American Diabetes Association, with several others; the Champalimaud Award for Vision, the largest award in the vision research field; and the Mary Tyler Moore and Robert Levine Award from the JDRF 2016.