Dr. Ravinder Mittal, MD, is a graduate of University of Delhi, India, and has been a resident of the United States since 1978. Following initial training in internal medicine and a three-year clinical and research fellowship in gastroenterology at Yale University, he became an Assistant Professor of Medicine and director of gastrointestinal function laboratory at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1985. Dr. Mittal rose in ranks and stayed at UVA until 1997. For the last twelve years, he has been a professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla, California. He is a passionate teacher, an empathetic clinician and a keen investigator.
Ever since his first research project in 1983, "Identification and Mechanism of Delayed Acid Clearance in Hiatus Hernia", Dr. Mittal has remained a passionate translational investigator in the area of physiology and pathophysiology of esophagus. Author of more than 100 original publication, large number of review articles and book chapters, he continues to unravel the mysteries of esophagus. During last twenty-five years of his investigative career, he has made number of seminal observations with regards to the role of crural diaphragm as an external lower esophageal sphincter, transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxation as the pathophysiologic mechanism of reflux diseases and muscle hypertrophy in esophageal motor disorders. For more than ten years, he is keenly investigating the role of longitudinal muscles of the esophagus in health and diseases of esophagus. In 1995 he won the inaugural Janssen Awards in Gastroenterology. Considered to be one of the most important hall marks of a true scientific investigator in medicine, Dr. MittalÂ’s research has been funded continuously by the National Institute of Health since 1988.
