Dr. Klaus H. Kaestner is the Suor Butterworth Professor of Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and member of Penn’s Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. Dr. Kaestner received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and completed a research fellowship at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.

Dr. Kaestner’s work is focused on the understanding of the genetics of glucose homeostasis and organ development. In addition, his laboratory has pioneered the development of functional genomics tools applicable to the study of the endocrine pancreas. Dr. Kaestner co-directs the Human Pancreas Analysis Program (HPAP) which performs deep phenotyping of the human endocrine pancreas to better understand the cellular and molecular events that precede and lead to beta-cell loss and/or dysfunction in type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D).

Dr. Kaestner has served on multiple review panels for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and for the National Institute for Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Dr. Kaestner was member of the Trans-NIDDK Strategic Planning Group on Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics in 2000. Dr. Kaestner serves on the editorial boards of of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and is co-editor-in-chief of Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Dr. Kaestner is member of the American Diabetes Association and the Endocrine Society, which awarded him the Roy O. Greep Award for Outstanding Research in 2017.