Kim Barrett received her PhD in biological chemistry from University College
London in 1982. Following postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of
Health, she joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, School
of Medicine in 1985, rising to the rank of Professor of Medicine in 1996, and
was named Distinguished Professor of Medicine in 2015. From 2006 to 2016,
she also served the University as Dean of the Graduate Division. Her research
interests focus on the physiology and pathophysiology of the intestinal
epithelium, and how its function is altered by commensal, probiotic, and
pathogenic bacteria as well as in specific disease states, such as inflammatory
bowel diseases. She has published more than 250 articles, chapters, and reviews,
and has received several honors for her research accomplishments including the
Bowditch and Davenport Lectureships from the American Physiological Society
(APS), the Bayliss-Starling Lectureship from The Physiological Society of the
UK and Ireland, and the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences, honoris causa,
from Queens University, Belfast. She has been very active in scholarly editing,
serving currently as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Physiology. She is also
a dedicated and award-winning instructor of medical, pharmacy, and graduate
students, and has taught various topics in medical and systems physiology to
these groups for more than 30 years. Her efforts as a teacher and mentor were
recognized with the Bodil M. Schmidt- Nielson Distinguished Mentor and
Scientist Award from the APS in 2012, and she also served as the 86th APS
President from 2013 to 2014. Her teaching experiences led her to author a prior
volume (Gastrointestinal Physiology, McGraw-Hill, 2005; second edition
published in 2014) and she was honored to have been invited to take over the
helm of Ganong in 2007 for the 23rd and subsequent editions, including this one.
