Prof. Nihal Thomas is Senior Professor in Endocrinology and Head of the Centre for Stem Cell Research at Christian Medical College Vellore, India.

He was formerly Head of the Department and Head of Unit-1 of Endocrinology, former Vice Principal for Research, former Deputy Medical Superintendent and formerly Associate Director at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India.

Having completed his schooling at Bishop Cotton Boys’ School in Bangalore, India, and his pre-university education at St Joseph’s College, he completed his undergraduate and postgraduate training at the Christian Medical College Vellore, with an interim period of two years at a rural hospital in Gadag, Karnataka, India, after his MBBS. He worked overseas at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science in Adelaide, Australia, the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, and the Islet and Pancreatic Research Laboratory in Sydney, Australia.

He has more than 440 indexed publications covering several areas of endocrinology and diabetes, and three books: one in its 9th edition (Practical Guide to Diabetes), one in its 2nd edition (Atlas in Endocrinology and Diabetes), and Foot – A Comprehensive Guide for Clinicians. He has an i10-index of >230, an h-index of >75 and >1,00,000 citations on Google Scholar. He is on the Stanford University list of the Top 2% Scientists in the world.

He initiated a World Diabetes Foundation project to train 200 hospitals in rural India, followed by a project from Project HOPE, which resulted in a sustainable training programme for doctors and educators in diabetes, inclusive of a distance education programme. This has been extended and has covered healthcare personnel from developing areas across Asia and Africa, with several modules delivered along with the distance education team in training individuals in diabetes skills. It is a major progenitor of the diabetes nurse educator system in India.

He supported the initiation of the endocrine next-generation sequencing genetic laboratory, which was the first one in a hospital in India when it was set up in 2012. He developed the institutional videoconferencing unit at CMC, Vellore, in addition to starting the first comprehensive diabetes educator programme in India, which now has 17 full-time diabetes educators and an integrated Foot Clinic and Young Diabetes Clinic at CMC Vellore.

He was a co-principal investigator on the 50-year-old Vellore birth cohort. His department has the capacity to conduct hyperinsulinaemic euglycaemic clamp studies, indirect calorimetry and NMR spectroscopy, and has done state-of-the-art work on low birth weight, the metabolic syndrome and malnutrition-modulated diabetes mellitus.

He has received grants to support research and outreach programmes from international and national agencies to the tune of several million rupees, and is the recipient of the Yedanapalli Best Researcher Award for the year 2009, the INCLEN Young Investigator of the Year Award 2004, the World India Diabetes Foundation Award for the year 2018, the Tamil Nadu Medical Council Award for the year 2022, the Molly and Thomas Bhanu Best Teacher Award for the year 2023 and the Dr MGR Medical University Faculty Award for Research for the year 2024.

He has given several orations (30) and talks, including a talk at the US Congress (Capitol), the American Diabetes Association, the MS Ahuja Oration, the Subash Mukherjee Oration, the Henry Rajaratnam Oration (at Sri Lanka and the South Asian Federation of Endocrinology), the Donald McLarty Award Lecture (at the East African Study Group for Diabetes in Tanzania) and the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes.

In addition, he has given talks at meetings in over 35 countries around the world. He is a PhD guide under the MGR Medical University, a PhD guide under the Regional Biotechnology Institute, a PhD co-guide at Karolinska, Sweden, an inspector for the National Board and an examiner for the higher specialty examinations (DM and DNB) in endocrinology. He is a grant reviewer for the Indian Council of Medical Research, the ENDAC committee of the Drug Controller General of India, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science and Technology, and was formerly on the Board of Studies for Research of the Dr MGR Medical University.

Awards and Professional Milestones

He has run more than 80 multinational and in-house designed clinical trials in diabetes mellitus. He was the organizing secretary of the Endocrine Society of India Conference in Vellore in 2010 and of the Winter Symposium in 2007, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the Endocrine Society of India. He has had research networks with several overseas universities, including Oxford, Copenhagen, Albert Einstein (New York), Monash, Melbourne and Karolinska. He is an Encore Faculty member at the University of Melbourne and a PhD co-supervisor at the same university. He was formerly Honorary Professor at the Royal College of Ireland.

During his tenure as Vice Principal for Research, he enhanced the scope and functioning of the Institutional Review Board, got CMC, Vellore recognised as a Centre of Excellence under the Clinical Development Services Agency (CDSA), worked to develop the processes of patenting, and made the Annual Research Day at CMC, Vellore a major event.

He was Associate Director for the Chittoor Campus of CMC, Vellore and was involved in the active development of that campus, an initiative to develop a 650-acre zone in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh into a broad-specialty hospital, with an impetus on evolving new dimensions in the educational aspects that CMC, Vellore had yet to venture into. Within a period of three years, the College of Nursing was initiated, the hospital infrastructure was expanded, and housing, a radiology suite and hostels were created.

He was a cofounder of the Department of Endocrinology when it separated from the Department of Medicine in 1994 and was instrumental in contributing significantly to its growth. He has handled a significant clinical burden during that period and has established a state-of-the-art unit that handles large volumes of clinical work: about 90,000 patients per year and several subspecialty clinics – endocrine, integrated diabetes, young-onset diabetes, pituitary and thyroid – in addition to those started by his colleagues (menopause, metabolic bone disease).

He has played a significant role in the financial management of the department and handles the administration and governance of 70 staff within the department. He is a reviewer for several international journals and was formerly on the editorial board of the journal Clinical Endocrinology.

He was Organizing Secretary of the Endocrine Society of India Conference in 2010 (ESICON-2010) at Vellore, Organizing Secretary of the Winter Symposium in Endocrinology in 2007 at Vellore, and Organizing Chairperson of the Vellore Endocrinology International Congress in January 2025.

The term “Type 5 Diabetes”, an alternative to malnutrition-modulated diabetes, was coined at CMC Vellore, adopted by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) President and formalized in Bangkok in April 2025. He is now co-chair of the IDF Working Group on Type 5 Diabetes Mellitus.

He is the Principal Coordinator for drawing up the WHO GDM Guidelines for Timor-Leste and for conducting a scoping review for 10 other countries, including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). He is chair of the DBT expert committee for Rare Genetic Disorders.

His team and the department were awarded the prestigious British Medical Journal South Asia Diabetology Team of the Year for 2015. His leadership was also instrumental in his team at the Department of Endocrinology, CMC, Vellore, being awarded the Excellence in Patient Care Award of the Royal College of Physicians in 2017 for outstanding work in advancing medical education and training. The department was also recognised as an Indian Council of Medical Research Centre of Excellence (ICMR-CoE) in 2024 for Diabetes Mellitus, and received the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Centre of Excellence Award in Diabetes Care in 2026.

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