Noel W Solomons is a native of Boston, Massachusetts, USA but has resided and worked in the Republic of Guatemala for the last 37 years. He was educated through the first 24 years in his hometown, attending university at Harvard College and subsequently receiving his MD degree from the Harvard Medical School. Clinical hospital training was received in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a fellowship of specialty and research training in gastroenterology and clinical nutrition at the University of Chicago. The final year of this fellowship became his first year at the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) in Guatemala. Repudiation of social and political ills of the United States in the 1970s and the attraction to the challenge of a truly needing society combined to make for an eager expatriate. Nevertheless, time was split between INCAP and the Department of Nutrition and Food Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a total of 8 years. Early research revolved primarily around lactose maldigestion and its resolution with exogenous oral enzymes and the biological availability of dietary zinc. In 1985, he became the co-founder of the Center for Studies of Sensory Impairment, Aging and Metabolism in Guatemala City. Research interests broadened thereafter to encompass vitamin A, iron and other micronutrients, gerontological nutrition, obesity and overweight, and diet, health and growth. He is the former awardee of the IUNS International Nutrition Prize, the Kellogg Prize in International Nutrition and the National Medal of Science and Technology of the Republic of Guatemala.
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