Professor Taheri is a graduate of University of Oxford, graduated with honours in Medicine from University of London and obtained his PhD from Imperial College London, followed by post-doctoral research training at Stanford University. He has extensive experience in leading large multi-disciplinary clinical and research teams. He has over 170 publications, has won several awards for his research and clinical care, and is listed in the top 2% of scientists in the world. Professor Taheri’s research was one of the first to show that sleep duration is associated with obesity, increasing recognition of sleep as an important lifestyle factor. Recently, his internationally acclaimed research in Qatar, and the first clinical trial aiming at reversing diabetes in the Middle East, showed that it is possible to reverse type 2 diabetes in a significant number of patients through intensive lifestyle intervention.

Professor Taheri has over 20 years’ experience in managing people with obesity and bariatric surgery and led the largest obesity centre in the UK National Health Service before coming to Qatar in 2013 as Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and Senior Consultant in Endocrinology at HMC. Professor Taheri is Director of the National Obesity Treatment Centre at the Qatar Metabolic Institute where he leads the multidisciplinary care of patients with obesity and its complications.