About Dr. George Bakris

George L. Bakris, MD, is a member of the National Kidney Foundation's Board of Directors. He is Professor of Medicine and Director of the American Society of Hypertension's Comprehensive Hypertension Center at the University of Chicago Medicine. Dr. Bakris was previously Vice-Chairman of Preventive Medicine and Director of the Rush University Hypertension Center in Chicago. He has published over 700 articles and book chapters in the areas of hypertension, diabetic kidney disease and progression of nephropathy. He also served as an expert member on the Cardio-renal Advisory Board of the FDA and is currently a special government expert to the FDA and CMS. He chaired the first National Kidney Foundation (NKF) Consensus report on blood pressure and impact on kidney disease progression. He has served on many national guideline committees including: the Joint National Committee (JNC) Writing Groups VI & 7, the JNC 7 executive committee, the American Diabetes Association Clinical Practice Guideline Committee, the National Kidney Foundation's Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (K-DOQI) Blood Pressure Guideline committee and the NKF-KDOQI Diabetes Guideline committee. Dr. Bakris is also the past president of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology and the American Society of Hypertension (ASH). Dr. Bakris received his medical degree from the Chicago Medical School and completed residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine where he also completed a research fellowship in Physiology and Biophysics. He then completed fellowships in Nephrology and Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Chicago.