Dr Alessandro Doria received his medical degree and his doctorate in endocrinology and metabolism from the University of Padua in Italy. He moved to the USA in 1990 to take up a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr Andrzej Krolewski at the Joslin Diabetes Center (Boston, MA, USA) on the genetic determinants of kidney complications of diabetes. After spending a year at Guy's Hospital in London, UK, he moved back to the Joslin Diabetes Center in 1997 to start a research programme on the genetic factors modulating susceptibility to early onset type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease in type 2 diabetes. These studies led to the discovery of a gene linked to early onset type 2 diabetes on chromosome 8p and to the identification of several genes involved in the modulation of cardiovascular risk in type 2 diabetes and the interaction with glycaemic control. Dr Doria is currently an Investigator in the Section on Genetics and Epidemiology as well as the Director of the Genetics Core at the Joslin Diabetes Center. He is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.