George L. Bakris, MD is Professor of Medicine and Director, Comprehensive Hypertension Center at University of Chicago Medicine. He is a co-author of Hypertension: A Companion to Braunwald’s Heart Disease, 3rd Edition.

Dr. Bakris received his medical degree from the Chicago Medical School and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, where he also did a research fellowship in Physiology and Biophysics. He then completed fellowships in Nephrology and Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Chicago, and is board certified in Hypertension, Internal Medicine, and Nephrology.

Prior to joining University of Chicago Medicine, Dr. Bakris served as Director of Renal Research at the Ochsner Clinic and was a faculty member of Tulane University School of Medicine. He was also Professor and Vice Chairman of Preventive Medicine and Director of the Rush University Hypertension Center in Chicago.

For more than three decades, Dr. Bakris has worked on the front lines of kidney disease, hypertension, and diabetes research, and he has made crucial discoveries that have had a lasting effect on diabetes and hypertension therapy. In his research activities, he has explored why the rate of kidney disease is significantly higher in the black population than it is in other ethnic groups. He also has evaluated specific markers of kidney disease progression and heightened cardiovascular risk, as well as how changes in the artery (central pressure) affect the heart and kidney.

A prolific author, Dr. Bakris has written hundreds of articles, book chapters, and books, and serves on the editorial boards of a number of publications and journals, including Cardiology Today, Hypertension, Kidney International Journal of Clinical Hypertension, Journal of Human Hypertension, Hypertension, and the Journal of Nephrology. He is the editor of the American Journal of Nephrology.