Tim Kieffer: 20Q20 interview

Tim Kieffer, PhD

Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences University of British Columbia

20 Questions with Tim Kieffer

1. Where were you born? Where did you grow up?
I was born in California to Canadian parents who opted to flee the USA when I was 3 B . I grew up in the interior before finally settling on the west coast.

2. Where did you go to school?
I attended high school in Kamloops followed by a couple years at Thompson Rivers University (then named Cariboo College) before transferring to UBC. I started university not knowing what I wanted to do and explored everything from law to marine biology.

It was John Brown, a professor in physiology, who gave me my first exposure to medical research, and a summer job working on salmon that got me hooked. My PhD was in physiology studying gut hormones that regulate insulin secretion (“incretins”) under the mentorship of Raymond Pederson and Chris McIntosh. I then continued on this topic during my postdoctoral training at Harvard with Joel Habener. It was an exciting time to see our work contribute to the development of novel drugs being used today to treat diabetes.

Read the full interview here.

Published May 2021.