Kyriakos S. Markides received his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1976 from Louisiana State University. He is currently the Annie and John Gnitzinger Distinguished Professor of Aging and Professor in the Department of Population Health and Health Disparities at the School of Public and Population Health. Dr Markides is the Editor of the Journal of Aging and Health, which he founded in 1989. He is the author or co-author of more than 450 publications, most of which focus on issues of aging and health among the Mexican American population, as well as on minority aging more broadly.
His research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1980. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the Hispanic EPESE (Established Population for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly) programme, a longitudinal study of the health of older Mexican Americans from the five southwestern states of the United States, which began in the early 1990s. He is also the Principal Investigator of the National Institute on Aging-funded Texas Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR).
Dr Markides is credited (together with J. Coreil) with coining the term “Hispanic Epidemiological Paradox”, which has become the dominant research framework in the study of Hispanic population health. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has ranked Dr Markides among the most highly cited social scientists worldwide.
Dr Markides has received numerous awards, including the 2015 Robert W. Kleemeier Award from the Gerontological Society of America for his contributions to aging research. He was recently elected as an External Member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts.
