Scott A. Summers
Scott Andrew Summers (born in Decatur, Illinois in 1967) is an American scientist and professor at the University of Utah. He co-founded Centaurus Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that is developing novel ceramide-reducing therapies to treat cardiometabolic disease. Education. Summers completed his BS degree at Indiana University, PhD at Southern Illinois University, and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Career. Summers is known for discovering that a class of fat metabolites termed ceramides contribute to the tissue dysfunction that underlies diabetes and its comorbidities. Though the idea was initially controversial, it has gained traction within  the medical community, to the extent that blood ceramides are now measured clinically as markers of cardiometabolic disease risk. After running laboratories in Singapore and Australia for 8 years, Summers returned to the USA and the University of Utah in 2016 to chair a new Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology and serve as the Co-Director (with Jared Rutter, HHMI) of the Utah Diabetes and Metabolism Research Center. Summers was named William J. Rutter, PhD, Presidential Endowed Chair of Biochemistry in 2021 and a University of Utah Distinguished Professor in 2022.