Prof. Norbert Stefan

Since he started his scientific career in 1997, Norbert Stefan focused on the clinical and experimental approach in humans to understand the pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes and its complications.

He commenced his medical training in the Department of Endocrinology and Diabetology at the University Hospital of Tübingen, Germany. Then, he received a stipend from the NIH/NIDDK to work as a Research Fellow at the NIH in Phoenix, USA, where he performed precise metabolic phenotyping in the Pima Indian population from 2001 to 2003 and focused on identifying the role of adiponectin in the regulation of insulin action in different tissues in adults and in children. For this purpose, he performed metabolic imaging of adipose tissue and the liver using the magnetic resonance techniques. Thereby, the role of fat accumulation in the liver as a putative early important causative factor in the genesis of insulin resistance moved in the focus of his research.

In Germany Norbert Stefan continued his medical training at the University Hospital of Tübingen and, focused on novel phenotyping strategies in the Tübingen Lifestyle Intervention Program (TULIP). In 2008 he received a Heisenberg-Stipend from the German Research Association and since 2011 he is Full Professor at the University of Tübingen. From 2018 until 2020 Norbert Stefan was a Visiting Professor at the Boston Children’s Hospital of the Harvard Medical School, where he could start a very fruitful scientific collaboration with Professor Morris F. White in the field of hepatokine research.

Norbert Stefan’s main areas of research are metabolic health in obesity (MHO) and normal weight. In this respect, in 2008, together with his colleagues, he published the first large cohort study addressing precise phenotyping in MHO. Another main area of his research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Besides phenotyping and treatment studies in NAFDL, together with his colleagues, in 2008 he first introduced the concept of hepatokines.
 

EndocrinologyDiabetologyNAFLDClinical metabolic phenotyping of humansEpidemiologyGenetics