Dr. Noel W. Solomons, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA in 1944, but his professional trajectory has been international, including contributions in the countries of the Pacific Rim and Asia to merit his designation as the 2003 recipient of the Asia Pacific Clinical Nutrition Society Award. His early education came close to his birthplace, obtaining his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College in Biochemical Sciences (1966) and his Medical Doctor degree from Harvard Medical School (1970). His professional migration then began with hospital training in Philadelphia (internal medicine), a specialty fellowship in Chicago (gastroenterology and clinical nutrition), and research fellowship in Guatemala at the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP). In fact, Guatemala has been his base of operations since 1975.

He has had faculty appointments at the University of Chicago, the Department of Nutrition and Food Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Francisco Marroquín Faculty of Medicine in Guatemala. In 1985, he co-founded the Center for Studies of Sensory Impairment, Aging and Metabolism (CeSSIAM) in Guatemala City, and has served as its Scientific Director ever since.

His research interests carve out a broad path across the disciplines of human and clinical nutrition, with studies in small intestinal disease and physiology, acute protein-energy malnutrition, lactose intolerance, trace element nutrition, aging, diet and chronic disease, and nutrition and resistance to infections among the themes of his over 400 publications.

He is a founding member of the Editorial Board of the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and sits on a dozen additional editorial boards of scientific journals. He organized a Guatemalan population sample for the Food Habits in Later Life multicenter collaborative project. He has presented in symposia or conducted workshops at the Asia Congress on Nutrition beginning in Kuala Lumpur (1991), Beijing (1995), Seoul (1998) and New Delhi (2003). From 1993 to 1998, he was a visiting faculty member for the Masters Course at the Regional Program on Community Nutrition of SEAMEO-Tropmed at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta.

Dr. Solomons served on the International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS) Committees on Urbanization and Nutrition and Ageing and Nutrition over the last decade and currently is heading up the newly-created IUNS Task-Force on Diet, Nutrition and Long-Term Health.

The APCNS award joins other prizes and honors such as the Kelloggs Prize of the Society for International Nutrition research (1996), the IUNS International Nutrition Prize (1997), and membership in the Guatemalan National Academy of Sciences.

Mark L Wahlqvist AO, MD, FRACP

Editor-in-Chief

Immediate Past President, APCNS

President, IUNS