Professor Paul Zimmet is Professor of Diabetes at Monash University and formerly Director Emeritus, Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute. In 1984, he founded the International Diabetes Institute which merged with the Baker Institute in 2008. He is Honorary President of the International Diabetes Federation and has an extensive international record in diabetes and obesity research, particularly in epidemiology and public health. His research predicted and has charted the evolving global type 2 diabetes epidemic.  His epidemiological studies commenced in the Pacific, and later to Mauritius and the United Arab Emirates. In 1999, he designed and led the team that undertook the first national diabetes and lifestyle study, AusDiab.

Professor Zimmet’s metabolic and genetic studies with Professor Greg Collier, at Deakin University,  led to important understanding of mechanisms in diabetes and obesity using one of the best animal models for type 2 diabetes, a gerbil, Psammomys obesus. He led the Monash team, with Professor Ian Mackay and Dr Merrill Rowley, to develop the first laboratory assay test (Anti-GAD) for predicting type 1 diabetes in children and an adult form now know widely as LADA – not the Czechoslovakian car but Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults! This test is now used worldwide. He co-chaired the Federal Government National Diabetes Strategy Advisory Group which prepared the groundwork for the government”s “National Diabetes Strategy 2016-2020 and is advising Singapore in the development of their national diabetes strategy.