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Professor David Phillips

David Phillips is Professor of Endocrine and Metabolic Programming at the University of Southampton, UK. He is also an Honorary Consultant Physician in Endocrinology and Diabetes for the Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust. He trained at the University of Cambridge and St Thomas’ Hospital, London, and following junior hospital appointments was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship at the University of Southampton, where he completed a PhD thesis on the epidemiology of thyroid disease. This work subsequently took him to Zaïre, Central Africa, where he carried out a trial of iodine supplementation on behalf of the UK Charity, OXFAM.

On his return he was appointed Lecturer in Endocrinology at the University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff. He was appointed to his current position in 1991. In Southampton his research programme has centred on the developmental origins of type 2 diabetes, the metabolic syndrome and related conditions. The work has been funded by the Medical Research Council, The Wellcome Trust, The National Institutes of Health and several UK-based charities.

He has collaborated extensively with research groups in other universities both in the UK and abroad and holds professorial appointments at the University of Toronto, Canada, and The University of Adelaide, South Australia. In recent years he has developed an interest in the neglected non-communicable diseases prevalent in rural sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia.