Dandona Receives Presidential Faculty Excellence Award

Published October 18, 2010 This content is archived.

Paresh Dandona.

Paresh Dandona, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, has been named the 2010-11 recipient of the Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence.

The annual award was established in 2008 by University at Buffalo President John B. Simpson to recognize a faculty member who has compiled a distinguished record of teaching, mentorship, research and public service.

In announcing his choice of Dandona as this year’s award recipient, Simpson explained that the longtime faculty member exemplifies the qualities that are intended to be recognized with the award: “a combination of outstanding and high-impact interdisciplinary scholarship that is making a significant difference in improving knowledge and people’s lives,” as well as a commitment to using one’s research and talents to serve the public and one’s profession, “while educating and mentoring a new generation of physicians, medical researchers and scientists.”

One of the world's leading experts in the treatment of diabetes and vascular disease, Dandona also is founder and director of the Diabetes-Endocrinology Center of Western New York. He joined the UB faculty in 1991 after 16 years at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine at the University of London, England.

His current research interests include insulin resistance, inflammation and atherosclerosis; pro-oxidative and pro-inflammatory effect of macronutrients; anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory effect of insulin and insulin sensitizers, TZDS; and the use of insulin infusion in reducing inflammation and increasing cardioprotection and cerebroprotection in heart attack and stroke. He has developed a therapy involving insulin for limiting damage during a heart attack that is being tested in a clinical trial involving 90 medical centers in the United States and Central America.

Head of the Division of Endocrinology in the medical school and chief of endocrinology at Kaleida Health, Dandona has authored or co-authored more than 450 publications and has presented at numerous conferences on diabetes and endocrine disorders.

He also serves as a consultant endocrinologist at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Erie County Medical Center, the Buffalo VA medical center, Lakeside Memorial Hospital in Brockport and Lakeshore Healthcare Center in Irving, as well as for Kaleida.

Dandona is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), the American College of Physicians, the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Endocrinology.

He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Allahabad University, a medical degree from All India Institute of Medical Sciences and a doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.