Qais Al-awqati MB, ChB

Dr. Qais Al-Awqati is the Jay I. Meltzer Professor of Nephrology and Hypertension and the Robert F. Loeb Professor of Medicine at Columbia University and has served as Chief of the Nephrology Division at Columbia since 1978. Dr. Al-Awqati focuses his research on the mechanism of differentiation of epithelial cells in the kidney and throughout the body.

Dr. Al-Awqati also serves as an editor for scientific journals, including Science, the Journal of Cell Biology, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Kidney International, and is a member of the editorial boards of many other publications. Dr. Qais Al-Awqati is the recipient of numerous awards in recognition of his research, including the NIH MERIT Award, the Columbia Triennial Award in Science, the Robert W. Berliner Prize of the American Physiological Society, and the Homer W. Smith Award of the American Society of Nephrology.

Dr. Qais Al-Awqati received his medical degree from the University of Baghdad College of Medicine. At a time when Iraq was suffering from the first major epidemic of cholera in its modern history, Dr. Al-Awqati, then a resident in medicine, established a hospital specifically for the treatment of cholera patients. This hospital was so successful in its treatment of cholera that only one patient succumbed to the disease, out of more than 400 patients admitted.