Organizing Committee

Dr. Vockley received his undergraduate degree at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and received his degree in Medicine and Genetics from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. He completed his pediatric residency at the University of Colorado Health Science Center, and his postdoctoral fellowship in Human Genetics and Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. Before assuming his current position in Pittsburgh and becoming a co-chair of INFORM, Dr. Vockley was Chair of Medical Genetics in the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine.

Dr. Vockley is internationally recognized as a leader in the field of inborn errors of metabolism and fatty acid oxidation disorders research. His lab has been responsible for identifying multiple new disorders since the year 2000, many of them defects in mitochondrial energy metabolism, and he has published over 200 scientific articles in peer review journals. His current research focuses on the molecular architecture of mitochondrial energy metabolism, in which he is breaking new ground in describing the role of dysfunction of mitochondrial energy metabolism in such common conditions as diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimer disease. Dr. Vockley has served on numerous national and international scientific boards including the Advisory Committee (to the Secretary of Health and Human Services) on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children where he was chair of the technology committee. He is co-chair of the International Network on Fatty Acid Oxidation Research and Therapy. He also serves as chair of the Pennsylvania State Newborn Screening Advisory Committee and the American College of Medical Genetics Therapeutics Committee. He is a past president of the International Organizing Committee for the International Congress on Inborn Errors of Metabolism and the Society for the Inherited Metabolic Disorders (SIMD). He is also a volunteer medical advisor for several parent and family support groups including the Fatty Acid Oxidation Family Support Group, Save Babies through Screening, United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, and the Organic Academia Support Group. He speaks at multiple family support functions throughout the year for CanPKU and the NPKU Alliance.

Dr. Vockley is the co-founder and editor of the North American Metabolic Academy, established by the SIMD to help educate the next generation of metabolic physicians in the United States, and serves as associate editor for the journal Molecular Genetics and Metabolism. Dr. Vockley was recognized in 2002 as the Research Educator of the Year while at the Mayo Clinic. At the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Vockley teaches in both the Medical School and Graduate School of Public Health. Dr. Vockley has mentored numerous Ph.D. candidates, post-doctoral fellows, and undergraduates in their research.