Professor Béguinot received his MD in 1981 at the Federico II University in Naples and his PhD in 1986 at the University of Siena, Italy. He is a certified clinical specialist in Internal Medicine and completed his medical training at the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Naples Medical School. Professor Béguinot spent about two years as a research scientist at the NIDDK, NIH in Bethesda, and three years at the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, USA. Then, he established his own laboratory at the CNR Institute of Experimental Endocrinology and Oncology, in Naples. He has been subsequently appointed Professor of Clinical Pathology at the Federico II University of Naples where he directs a research group working in the field of type 2 diabetes. He is presently Director, “Genomics of Diabetes” Unit, National Council of Research and Dean of Research, Federico II University of Naples Medical School. At this same University, he is also Head, Department of Internal Medicine, Clinical Immunology and Pathology, Infectious Disorders (DICIPI), Director, PhD programme in Experimental and Clinical Medicine and Deputy Director, Department of Translational Medicine.
Professor Béguinot's articles (citations increasing since 1977) have been published by internationally renowned journals; he received several national and international scientific awards, is member of 8 learned societies and has been visiting scientist at the NIH, Bethesda. He has served as chair or member into a number of scientific and academic committees in national and international boards. He has been repeatedly member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Diabetes Society, member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Endocrinology Society, member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Associate Editor of Diabetologia and Frontiers in Endocrinology, member of the Advisory Board of Diabetologia, member of the EASD Council, member of the EFSD Scientific Committee, member of the EASD – EU Committee, member of the EASD Executive Committee, EASD Honorary Secretary and is presently member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation and coordinator of several basic and industrial research networks active in the field of type 2 diabetes and funded by the European Union, the Italian Ministry of Education, the Italian Ministry of Health, the Italian Ministry of Economy and Campania Region, CNR and INSERM. He is also member of the Advisory Boards of the Deutsches Diabetes-Zentrum and of HFM-Hybrid Fusion Medicals GmbH and President of the steering committees of the iCure and COEPICA consortia. Professor Béguinot t’s research has also been repeatedly funded by several national and international charities and associations, including JDRF, EASD, Telethon Italy and Italian Cancer Research Society (AIRC).
Over the past 40 years, almost 300 MD or PhD students have been trained in Professor Béguinot's laboratory, many of which have been directly supervised by Professor Béguinot. In addition, he has served as thesis opponent in major academic institutions in the EU and Canada and has been responsible for international training platforms in several networks of excellence funded by the EU and, at the national level, by the Italian Ministry of Education and the Italian Council of Research.
Since 2010, Professor Béguinot and part of his research team have started to focus on the molecular bases of type 2 diabetes risk and global epidemics. In his vision, risk of type 2 diabetes and of its major comorbidities and complications, as well as the current epidemics of diabetes are dominated by epigenetic changes ultimately impinging on glucose tolerance. In Professor Béguinot’s laboratory, a number of technologies and approaches have been developed to identify these mechanisms both at the individual and at the population levels. To pursue this scientific goal, ten years ago, he has co-proposed a new university department, the Department of Translational Medicine, approved by the “Federico II” University of Naples, where expertises in clinical and experimental pediatrics, internal medicine, human aging and molecular medicine are available. The ambition of the the Department of Traslational Medicine is, indeed, to analyze the causes of non-communicable disorders through the entire spectrum of human life.