Rate My Professor Juleen Zierath

Juleen Zierath is Professor of Clinical Integrative Physiology in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery and the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Karolinska Institutet, where she leads the Integrative Physiology research group focused on skeletal muscle metabolism, insulin signal transduction, glucose homeostasis, and type 2 diabetes pathogenesis. She also holds the position of Professor and Executive Director of the Zierath Group, Circadian Biology, at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen. Her research employs gene expression profiling, proteomics, bioinformatics, functional genomics, and animal models to identify dysregulated genes and validate therapeutic targets in metabolic diseases, including exercise adaptations, circadian rhythms, epigenetics, mitochondrial function, and exerkines.

Zierath received a B.S. in Secondary Education and Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in 1984, an M.A. in Exercise Physiology from Ball State University in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Physiology from Karolinska Institutet in 1995, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. She was appointed Docent in Physiology at Karolinska Institutet in 1998 and has held professorial positions there since 2006. Zierath serves as Editor-in-Chief of Diabetologia since 2010, member of the Nobel Assembly since 2006, former Chair of the Nobel Committee from 2013 to 2015, and has contributed to numerous editorial boards, grant review panels, and scientific advisory committees including Keystone Symposia and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. Key publications include 'Circadian rhythms and exercise—re-setting the clock in metabolic disease' (Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 2019), 'Exerkines in health, resilience and disease' (Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 2022), and 'Post-translational Modifications: The Signals at the Intersection of Exercise, Glucose Uptake, and Insulin Sensitivity' (Endocrine Reviews, 2022). Her contributions have advanced understanding of exercise as therapy for insulin resistance, earning awards such as the Diabetes Prize for Excellence (2024), Claude Bernard Medal and Lectureship (2021), Harold Rifkin Award (2021), Nordic Medicine Prize (2019), and Swedish Medical Society Jubilee Prize (2019).