Prof Stephen O'Rahilly

Experts / Prof Stephen O’Rahilly

Prof Stephen O’Rahilly

Professor and Co-Director of the Institute of Metabolic Science and Director of the Medical Research Council Metabolic Diseases Unit, University of Cambridge

Professor Sir Stephen O’Rahilly FRS, is Co-Director of the Institute of Metabolic Science and Director of the Medical Research Council Metabolic Diseases Unit at the University of Cambridge which is part of the broader University of Cambridge Metabolic Research Laboratories which he also directs. On the wider Cambridge Biomedical Campus, he is Scientific Director of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and Head of the University Department of Clinical Biochemistry.

He was elected FRS in 2003, to the National Academy of Sciences, USA in 2011, has received five honorary doctorates and numerous scientific awards including the 2002 Heinrich Weiland Prize, the 2005 Luft Prize, the 2007 Feldberg Prize, the 2010 InBev-Baillet Latour Prize for Health, the 2014 Debrecen Prize, the 2014 International Prize for Translational Neuroscience of the Gertrud Reemtsma Foundation, the 2015 Edward K Dunham Lectureship, Harvard Medical School and in 2015 was the first recipient of the EASD/Novo Nordisk Foundation Diabetes Prize for Excellence. More recently he was the 2016 Harveian Orator RCP of London, in 2019 received the Taubman Prize for Excellence in Medical Science, University of Michigan, USA, the Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement, American Diabetes Association and the Manpei Suzuki International Prize for Diabetes Research, Japan. In 2020 the Rank Prize for Nutrition and in 2022 the Royal Society Croonian Medal (jointly with Professor Sadaf Farooqi). In 2013 he was made Knight Bachelor “for services to medical research”.

His main research area is the aetiology and pathophysiology of human metabolic and endocrine disease and how such information might be used to improve the diagnosis, therapy and prevention of these diseases.

We think we have found a cause of pregnancy sickness, and it may lead to a treatment

Sickness in pregnancy, or hyperemesis gravidarum, is common and is thought to affect seven out of ten women at some time in their pregnancy. But, until recently, very little has been known about why it happens.

We think we have found a cause of pregnancy sickness, and it may lead to a treatment

Sickness in pregnancy, or hyperemesis gravidarum, is common and is thought to affect seven out of ten women at some time in their pregnancy. But, until recently, very little has been known about why it happens.

By Sam Lockhart, Prof Stephen O'Rahilly