Suraj Patel, M.D., Ph.D.

Suraj Patel, M.D., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and the Center for Human Nutrition at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and a member of the division of Digestive and Liver Diseases. His clinical interests include obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and alcohol-related liver disease.

Originally from New Jersey, Dr. Patel holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he graduated magna cum laude. He then received master's and doctoral degrees in bioengineering and immunology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before pursuing his medical degree at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Dr. Patel then completed internal medicine residency training at UT Southwestern, before receiving advanced training through a fellowship program in gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, while simultaneously conducting a research fellowship in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Afterward, he remained at BIDMC to become a member of the clinical faculty.

Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Patel joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2021.

Dr. Patel focuses his research on the metabolic causes and consequences of liver disease, and how the immune system influences liver metabolism. He combines conventional biological methods with novel transcriptomic and epigenomic techniques to develop therapies that limit organ dysfunction and improve patient health in metabolic disease. His investigations have resulted in numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, and he has been invited to present his findings throughout the United States and around the world.

Dr. Patel is an active member of several professional organizations, including the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, American College of Gastroenterology, and the American Gastroenterology Association. He also serves as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous scientific journals, including Hepatology, Digestive Diseases and Sciences, Therapeutic Advances in Gastroenterology, Human Immunology, Tissue Engineering, Technology, The New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Hepatology.