|
|
|
Welcome to the Division of Endocrinology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Our division strives for excellence in offering state-of-the-art care and is committed to ongoing research, advanced treatment and the development of management programs to help patients with their health care needs. Please continue and learn more about our faculty below.
|
Abhimanyu Garg, M.D.
Interim Chief of the Division of Endocrinology
 Dr. Garg is the Chief of the Division of Human Nutrition. He regularly teaches the endocrinology fellows in the lipid and diabetes clinics at the VA, the lipid clinic at Parkland hospital, and attends on the endocrinology and diabetes inpatient consult service at the VA. Many prior endocrinology fellows have worked with Dr. Garg during their research training.
Dr. Garg is involved in carrying out several clinical studies to identify genetic basis and cellular mechanisms responsible for various lipodystrophies. The purpose of his ongoing studies is to identify defective genes responsible for the body fat loss and metabolic abnormalities in various types of genetic lipodystrophies. He is also trying to identify underlying mechanisms (autoimmune and others) for fat loss in patients with the acquired lipodystrophies.
Our Dedicated Faculty
|
Alice Chang, MD, MSCS
 Dr. Chang is a transplant to Texas, having grown up in Wisconsin (yes, she has a cheese head) and spent the next decade or so on the East Coast. She did her Endocrinology fellowship at UT Southwestern Medical Center and is now an active clinical investigator. She completed post-doctoral fellowships in cardiovascular and endocrinology research as well as completion of the KL2 Clinical Scholars program and Masters of Science in Clinical Science.
In addition to personally mentoring medical students and fellows, she has served as a regional Councilor for the Southern American Federation of Research, recruiting and preparing students and residents to present their research at a regional scientific meeting. She also participates in committees focused on developing mentorship both locally and nationally - the Women in Science and Medicine Committee for UT Southwestern and I co-chair the Mentoring Committee for the Women in Endocrinology that meets annually at the Endocrine Society.
She credits the collaborative environment at UT Southwestern, across disciplines and departments, as being critical to career development and in her projects studying cardiovascular risk in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome.
|
|
Gregory Clark, MD
 Dr Clark is a native of California, where he attended both college and medical school. He subsequently completed his internal medicine residency and endocrinology fellowship before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr Clark’s academic career has focused on type 1 diabetes, clinically and in terms of basic and clinical research. He has investigated adult and embryonic stem cells for their potential to provide a source of insulin producing cells to replace the beta cells destroyed by the autoimmune process of type 1 diabetes. He has developed novel programs to ease the transition for patients with type 1 diabetes from pediatric to adult care. Since joining the faculty at UTSW in 2007, he has investigated rodent models of beta cell regeneration. More recently Dr Clark has studied the adipocyte hormone leptin for its ability to improve metabolic control in type 1 diabetes and he is translating promising rodent work into the first clinical trial to test leptin in humans with type 1 diabetes.
Dr Clark enjoys spending time with his wife and 3 young boys.
|
|
Hans K. Ghayee, DO
Assistant Fellowship Program Director
 Dr. Ghayee was born and raised in the great state of Texas. He did his undergraduate work at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, and attended medical school at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. After the completion of his training in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins University/Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, he was recruited for an endocrinology fellowship and later faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
Dr. Ghayee precepts endocrine fellows primarily at the Dallas VA Medical Center. He coordinates multidisciplinary conferences as well as clinics at the VA. His clinical and research interests are in adrenal tumor disorders as well as neuroendocrine tumors. Dr. Ghayee and his collaborators are working on developing human adrenal cell lines that reliably reflect the physiology of aldosterone producing adenomas and cortisol producing adenomas which would enable scientists to elucidate the molecular mechanisms responsible for autonomous hormone production. Besides endocrinology, Dr. Ghayee is a big sports fan and history buff.
Ugis Gruntmanis, MD
 Dr.Gruntmanis is originally from country of Latvia where he attended Stradins University medical school. Completed residency at Yale and University of Rochester, fellowship at Cedars-Sinai /UCLA Medical Center. He is currently Chief of Endocrinology Section at North Texas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where on weekly basis he teaches students, residents and fellows at Endocrinology and Osteoporosis Clinics. He is actively involved in Internal Medicine Residency Program as Associate Program Director and member of CECC. His research interests are in different aspects of male osteoporosis and factors contributing to it.
His hobbies involve health policy and health economics abroad and in US, skiing, running and attending beautiful Dallas Winspear opera and Dallas Stars games when possible.
|
|
Sumitha Sukumar, MD
Assistant Fellowship Program Director
 Dr. Sukumar grew up in three different continents, but considers Texas home. She attended a six-year combined BA-MD program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She completed Internal Medicine Residency at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Endocrinology fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. She is a clinical educator and lead physician of the Parkland Endocrine clinic.
She works closely with the fellows in the Parkland Endocrine and Diabetes clinic as well as on the inpatient consult rotations at Parkland and University Hospitals. She is also helping with the fellowship program serving as an assistant fellowship program director and providing clinical mentorship to the fellows.
|
|
Ildiko Lingvay, MD, MPH, MSCS
Fellowship Program Director
 Dr. Lingvay was born and raised in Romania, where she completed her medical school training. She has been a Texan since 1998 as she trained in Internal Medicine at Texas Tech and in Endocrinology at UT Southwestern. She has obtained a Master in Public Health from UT Houston (Dallas campus) in 2006. She has also completed the Clinical Scholars Program at UT Southwestern in 2008, and was awarded Masters of Science in Clinical Sciences with Distinction.
Dr. Lingvay is overseeing the fellowship training program and the fellows’ mentorship committees. She regularly attends in the Parkland diabetes clinic and the inpatient diabetes unit, as well as the inpatient endocrinology consult service at Parkland and the University Hospitals. She also leads the Multidisciplinary Thyroid Cancer Program at UT Southwestern and Parkland. Her clinical research projects span the area of type 2 diabetes and obesity, in particular exploring mechanisms of beta-cell dysfunction as it pertains to the development of obesity-associated diabetes.
She enjoys water sports and winter sports – especially downhill skiing and figure skating, and is very excited to have successfully passed on this “bug” to her two young daughters!
Michael McPhaul, MD
 Dr. McPhaul has a research lab with a focus on SERMs and also has an interest in pituitary disorders. He is involved in the fellowship by precepting fellows in Parkland Endocrine clinic and on the UTSW inpatient endocrine consult service.
|
|
Pablo F. Mora, MD, MSc, FACE, CDE
 Pablo F. Mora is associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He is also Co-Director of the Saint Paul Diabetes Education Program at Saint Paul Hospital.
Dr. Mora completed his undergraduate and graduate medical education at the University of Costa Rica School of Medicine. He completed postgraduate studies in internal medicine at the University of Costa Rica and University Hospitals in San Jose, Costa Rica where he also completed a critical care fellowship. He then went on to complete a fellowship in endocrinology and metabolism at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.
Prior to joining the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School faculty, Dr Mora was on the internal medicine staff at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and was also a consultant endocrinologist for the Choctaw Nation Diabetes Treatment Center in Talihina, Oklahoma.
In 2009, Dr. Mora received a Masters’ Degree in Clinical Sciences from the UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Dallas, Texas.
Since September 2009, he has been working as Internal Medicine Departmental Billing Compliance Officer, with an special interest on the modeling of billing and documentation processes and its integration into an electronic medical records system.
Dr Mora is a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, a Certified Diabetes Educator and a fellow of the American College of Clinical Endocrinologists. His clinical interests include diabetes in special populations, post-transplantation diabetes, and modern insulin therapy.
|
Merri Pendergrass, MD
Dr. Pendergrass earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, her doctorate from the University of Texas, and her medical degree from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. She completed her internal medicine residency and endocrinology fellowship at the University of Texas. She currently works for Medco and responsible for setting the strategic direction for activities related to diabetes and its related conditions. Immediately prior to joining Medco in the winter of 2008, Dr. Pendergrass served as the Director of the Diabetes Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Pendergrass is currently board certified in internal medicine and in endocrinology and metabolism. She serves on editorial boards for leading journals including Diabetes Care and Nature Clinical Practice, Endocrinology and Metabolism. Dr. Pendergrass currently is on the faculty at UT Southwestern Medical School and is involved with the fellowship by precepting fellows in the Parkland Endocrine and Diabetes clinics. |
Maria Ramos-Roman, MD, MSCS
 Dr. Ramos-Roman trained in Medicine in Puerto Rico and moved to UT Southwestern Medical Center for her fellowship in Endocrinology. She is an Assistant Professor interested in mechanisms that protect women with a history of gestational diabetes against future development of diabetes. She is also interested in the mechanisms by which chronic overnutrition contributes to episodes of diabetic ketoacidosis in type 2 diabetes. Dr. Ramos-Roman sees patients with diabetes at the Aston clinic and at Parkland Hospital. She teaches fellows in Parkland hospital on the inpatient diabetes unit as well as outpatient diabetes clinic. Dr. Ramos also attends on the inpatient endocrinology consult service at Parkland and University Hospitals.
Chanhaeng Rhee, MD
 Dr. Rhee is involved with the fellowship by attending on the UTSW inpatient endocrine consult service, rotates on the Parkland inpatient diabetes unit, and precepts in both Parkland Diabetes as well as Parkland Endocrine clinics.
|
Magdalene Szuszkiewicz-Garcia, MD
 Dr. Szuszkiewicz-Garcia grew up in Maryland. She completed her BS degree at Loyola University in Baltimore and subsequently attended University of Maryland School of Medicine. She received her internal medicine training at Georgetown University –Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. After working as a hospitalist for couple of years, she moved to Dallas for her fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism at UT Southwestern Medical Center and is currently one of the junior faculty members. In addition to clinical teaching, she performs research in fatty acid metabolism in collaboration with Dr Scott Grundy and adipose physiology research in collaboration with Dr Philipp Scherer.
|
|
Jean D. Wilson, MD
 Professor Jean D. Wilson is a leader in androgen physiology. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and UT Southwestern Medical School, completed an internal medicine residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and was a post-doctoral fellow in clinical biochemistry at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda MD. Wilson’s research has focused on the mechanism of androgen action and in particular on the role of androgens in the formation of the male phenotype during embryogenesis. The signal discovery that has guided his work was the finding that the testosterone metabolite dihydrotestosterone mediates many actions previously attributed to testosterone itself and that the two androgens work via the same receptor molecule. After demonstrating that dihydrotestosterone formation is essential for the development of prostatic hyperplasia in man and dog, he turned to the formation of the male phenotype and as the result of work in embryos of many species, including the human, devised a two-hormone model to explain this process. The general validity of the model was confirmed by identifying four human disorders of sexual differentiation that result from single gene mutations that impair one of the steps in this process, namely the luteinizing hormone receptor, the 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase reaction in testosterone synthesis, steroid 5alpha reductase 2, and the androgen receptor. However, less than half of cases of male pseudohermaphroditism can be explained by these mutations cumulatively, and as a consequence he turned to the marsupial (in which male phenotypic differentiation takes place after birth) as the ideal animal model to investigate this process in greater detail, first in the American opossum and over the past 15 years in the Australian tammar wallaby.
Professor Wilson holds the Charles Cameron Sprague Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Research and is professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical School at Dallas. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of the US and of its Institute of Medicine, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal College of Physicians and has served as president of the Endocrine Society, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the subpspecialty board on endocrinology and metabolism. He was the editor for many years of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine and of Williams' Textbook of Endocrinology, and he has a career total of 340 journal articles. He is the recipient of the Koch and Oppenheimer Awards of the Endocrine Society, the Sir Henry Dale Medal of the Society for Endocrinology, the Amory Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Kober Medal of the Association of American Physicians.
|
Adjunct Faculty Members
Zahid Ahmad, MD
 Dr. Ahmad is from Louisiana. He completed Internal Medicine Residency and Endocrinology fellowship at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He has joined the Division of Nutrition and Metabolism in the Department of Internal Medicine. His current research involves finding new genes associated with inherited lipid disorders. He interacts with the endocrinology fellows in lipid clinic at Parkland, and attends on the endocrinology inpatient consult service at parkland and University Hospitals. He enjoys teaching fellows how to manage common as well as rare lipid disorders.
Fredrick Dunn, MD
 Fredrick L. Dunn, M.D. received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his medical degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at UT Southwestern Medical Center. In 1980, Dr. Dunn joined the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and Harvard Medical School faculty. In 1986 he moved to Duke University Medical Center, where he established the Duke Lipid Clinic and was co-director of the Diabetes Management Service. In 1994, Dr. Dunn joined Merck & Co., Inc as Senior Medical Director for the South Central Region, and in 1997 was promoted to Executive Director for Academic and Professional Affairs. In 2000, he moved to Novartis Pharmaceuticals as Vice-President & Global Head, Diabetes & Obesity Clinical Research. In 2003, Dr Dunn joined Tularik Inc in South San Francisco, CA as Head, Clinical Research, Metabolism and Endocrinology. At Tularik he was responsible for the clinical development of metabolic compounds targeting treatments for diabetes, obesity and dyslipidemia. After the acquisition of Tularik by Amgen Inc, Dr. Dunn returned to UT Southwestern Medical Center as Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Director, Lipid and Diabetes Management Services at the Dallas VA Medical Center. Dr Dunn is an active co-investigator for the Center for Human Nutrition. His current research interests include diabetic dyslipidemia, the treatment of severely insulin resistant patients, and the role of free fatty acids in the etiology of diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
Daniel W. Foster, M.D.
 Dr. Foster is the John Denis McGarry, Ph.D. Distinguished Chair in Diabetes and Metabolic Research. He was Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine for almost 16 years. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a Master of the American College of Physicians.
He was Co-Editor with Dr. Jean D. Wilson of three volumes of Williams Textbook of Endocrinology and has written extensively in other textbooks of Internal Medicine and Endocrinology. His research focused on the intermediary metabolism of glucose and fatty acids.
Dr. Foster regularly attends all endocrinology conferences and provides valuable insights to the attending fellows and faculty.
Naim Maalouf, MD
Assistant Fellowship Program Director
 Dr. Maalouf is an Assistant Program Director of the fellowship program and also coordinates the weekly Endocrinology Fellows’ Conference. He regularly attends in the Mineral Metabolism clinic at Parkland and on the endocrinology inpatient consult service at Parkland and UT Southwestern Hospitals.
His clinical and research interests are in the field of Nephrolithiasis and Calcium, Parathyroid and Bone Metabolism. Research opportunities are available for Endocrinology fellows interested in pursuing either basic or clinical research in Mineral Metabolism.
Philip Raskin, M.D.
 Philip Raskin was born outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the small town of Carnegie, the home of Honus Wagner. He did his undergraduate work at Washington & Jefferson College and received his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine there. After serving in the United States Air Force, he did a Fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, actually the same Fellowship program that exists today. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American College of Endocrinology, and is a Certified Diabetes Educator.
He is presently Professor of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine and holds the Clifton and Betsy Robinson Chair in Biomedical Research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He is the Director of the University Diabetes Treatment Center and the Diabetes Clinic at Parkland Health and Hospital Systems.
His research program is directed at many aspects of diabetes. He is the Principal Investigator in two NIH funded multicenter diabetes trials: The Diabetes Control and Complications Trial/Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications (DCCT/EDIC) and TrialNet, a consortium that is working on ways to prevent type 1 diabetes. In addition, he is active in the development of new drugs to make the treatment of diabetes and its complications better and easier for the patient. Several of the current faculty members in the division of Endocrinology and Metabolism worked in his laboratory during their Fellowship. He is the Editor of The Journal of Diabetes and Its Complications. He plays an active role in the Fellowship program as an frequent attending on the diabetes inpatient service (The University Diabetes Treatment Center) and in Diabetes Clinic.
He lives with his wife of more years than he will say. He has two grown children, whom along with their spouses live in Dallas. He has four beautiful grandchildren. He remains, to this day, a rabid Pittsburgh Steeler fan.
Jeffrey Zigman, MD, PhD
 Dr. Zigman grew up in NJ. He went to undergrad at Cornell University, and subsequently moved to Chicago where he completed an 8 year-long combined M.D.-Ph.D. Program and Internal Medicine residency at the University of Chicago. He combined research and clinical fellowship in Endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. During fellowship, Dr. Zigman performed research on ghrelin and the neuroanatomic basis of body weight homeostasis, in the laboratory of Joel K. Elmquist, D.V.M, Ph.D. Dr. Zigman moved to UTSW in January 2006, and is now Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Psychiatry and is currently affiliated with the Division of Hypothalamic Research, the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism and the Integrative Biology Graduate Program. Dr. Zigman’s current research focuses on ghrelin’s roles in appetite, ghrelin cell physiology, and sites of ghrelin action. One of the current senior endocrine fellows is currently working in Dr. Zigman’s lab on a basic science research project as well as on a related human trial. Also, Dr. Zigman has a weekly thyroid nodule clinic where he instructs the fellows on practical aspects of thyroid ultrasound and ultrasound-guided fine needle aspirations of thyroid nodules. Dr. Zigman enjoys growing fruit trees in his yard and hanging out with his doggy.
|
|
