Dr. Arvan received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and his M.D. and Ph.D. (in Cell Biology) from Yale University  Following residency in Internal Medicine, Dr. Arvan completed fellowship training in Endocrinology at Yale and then became an Assistant and later Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School (Beth Israel Hospital).  He then moved and became Full Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.  Since 2003, Dr. Arvan has served as Chief of the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes at the University of Michigan.  During this period of time he spent 8 years as the Director of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Diabetes Center.  Throughout, Dr. Arvan has been designated as the Brehm Professor of Diabetes Research, one of many endowed professorships within the Caswell Diabetes Institute at the University of Michigan.  

Dr. Arvan has a long record of successful trainees who are current faculty at academic institutions around the world.  Dr. Arvan is an elected member of the ASCI and AAP; he won the RR Bensley Award (Am. Assoc. Anat.);  was a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, Pfizer Visiting Professor, Burroughs-Wellcome Visiting Professor, the Sidney Ingbar Lecturer (Harvard); the PSTP Visiting Professor (Wash. U.), the McKenzie Lecturer (U. Miami), the Harrison Society Visiting Professor (Vanderbilt), and the Distinguished Faculty Award (U. Michigan).  Dr. Arvan’s research work has focused on peptide hormone synthesis, especially insulin synthesis.  He is specifically interested in understanding how peptide hormone protein precursors mature into medically-active hormones, and how these steps may go wrong in endocrine diseases such as diabetes.