Simin Liu received his MD at the Jinan University School of Medicine, then earned his MPH and ScD degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health. He served as Instructor, Assistant, and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and Assistant and Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to joining the Brown faculty, he was founding director of UCLA’s Inter-school Program in Metabolic Diseases and the Center fo Metabolic Disease Prevention, while also serving as Professor of Epidemiology, Medicine and Ob/Gyn at UCLA. At Brown, Simin is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health and Pfofessor of Medicine (Endocrinology) at Browns’ Alpert Medican School’ he is also director of the Center for Global Cardiometabolic Health (CGCH).
Simin’s research is at the interface of nutrition and genetics/genomics and focuses on their interplay in affecting major chronic diseases in human populations. By examining large and high-quality prospective cohorts of middle-aged women and men (i.e., the Nurses’ Health Study, the Women’s Health Study, the Physicians’ Health Study), Simin and his collaborators have studied how dietary, life-course, and genetic factors may influence the development of chronic diseases. Within the common theme of insulin resistance, several specific diet-disease relations have been identified in this effort. Specifically, his group has identified dietary glycemic index and load and intake of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and dietary fiber as significant predictors for future risk of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease (CHD).