Boston – (September 18, 2017) – George L. King, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Joslin Diabetes Center received the Founders Choice Award during GK50, an event celebrating the Boston area’s 50 Most Influential People of Color in Healthcare and Life Sciences. The GK50 Health and Life Sciences event is part of Get Konnected! a networking series started by African American public relations entrepreneur, Colette Phillips, that brings together business and social innovation leaders to encourage diversity in the business world, and to raise awareness about people of color in positions of power, as well as trailblazers and emerging leaders.

Dr. King is the principal investigator of Joslin’s groundbreaking Medalist Study, a study which involves people who have had type 1 diabetes for more than 50 years. The study has redefined the approach to beta cell regeneration., 

Dr. King, the Director of Research and Co-Head of the Section on Vascular Cell Biology, as well as Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, joined Joslin in 1981 and has served in a number of high-level posts at Joslin and Harvard. In addition to his leadership in the scientific community, Dr. King is internationally recognized for his research on the causes of diabetes-induced microvascular and cardiovascular pathologies, which are relevant to both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. These complications are the major causes of blindness, kidney failure and amputation in adult Americans. 

Dr. King has received numerous awards including the 2015 Edwin Bierman award from the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the Donald Silver Excellence in Research Award from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the Cogan Award from the Association for Research and Vision and Ophthalmology, as well as the Antonio Champalimaud Vision Award for his work on the role of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) which is today the basis for the anti-VEGF treatment for diabetic retinopathy. 

He is currently a member of the Scientific and Medical Programs Oversight Committee of the American Diabetes Association, and is the senior executive for Joslin’s Asian American Diabetes Initiative (AADI), which promotes care and education for the Asian Americans living with diabetes. 

Dr. King received his medical degree from Duke Medical School and completed training as both a Research and a Clinical Associate at the National Institutes of Health. 

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