Khaled awarded Fulbright-Nehru

Mohammad Khaled, Ph.D., has been awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award to develop and improve research and teaching efforts in India related to Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Khaled, professor emeritus in the UAB Department of Nutrition Sciences, will collaborate with the Department of Physiology at the University of Calcutta, India, to look at Type 2 diabetes mellitus specifically due to Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infections which are highly prevalent among Indian populations. This expands research Khaled conducted while a professor at UAB.

“Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease posing great human health threats,” said Khaled. “We see about 50 percent of worldwide populations are infected with H. pylori but more than 85 percent of populations in India have been infected since childhood. So it is of great interest, therefore, to investigate if H. pylori could somehow be linked with T2DM in Indian populations since both of these phenomena are highly prevalent in them.”

The award, given by the Institute of International Education’s Council for International Exchange of Scholars in conjunction with the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, ranges from five months to two years to broaden the clinical research capabilities at the University of Calcutta. Khaled will help them form a team of basic science researchers and clinicians which he says is currently rare in Indian Academic Institutions.

This will go a long way in helping us understand other factors influencing health complications and it will help the future health outcomes of many people,” said Khaled. “This is one of the most prestigious assignments you can receive from the IIE so it is a great honor for me and for UAB.”

Khaled, a 1975 graduate of the University of London, has studied the role of infections of H. pylori in relation to diabetes and coronary heart disease for more than three decades.