Paul Zimmet is currently the Foundation Director of the International Diabetes Institute, a position he has held since 1985, and Professor of Diabetes at Monash University. He is also a Professor at Deakin University and at the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. He serves on the Australian Government’s Strategic Task Force on Diabetes. His research in Pacific and Indian Ocean populations (Micronesians, Polynesians and Melanesians and migrant Asian Indians, Chinese and Creoles) has provided new insights into the genetic contribution of type 2 diabetes and the role of obesity, exercise, nutrition and socio-cultural change.

More recently, he led the team that carried out the first ever national diabetes and obesity study in Australia (AusDiab). He has published over 550 scientific papers, chapters and reviews in peer-reviewed journals and books. He is co-editor of the major and widely used text on diabetes - "International Textbook of Diabetes Mellitus" and also co-editor of "The Epidemiology of Diabetes", both with John Wiley.

Professor Zimmet has received many awards, including the Kelly West Medal from the American Diabetes Association, the Eli Lilly Award of the IDF, and the AM Cohen Award Lecture of the EASD. In 1997, at the 16th IDF Congress in Finland, he received the 1st Peter Bennett Diabetes Epidemiology Award for outstanding contributions to research on the epidemiology of diabetes. In 2002, he received the Harold Rifkin Award of the American Diabetes Association for international contributions to diabetes and was also conferred as Honoris Causa Doctoris by the Complutense University, Madrid, the second largest university in the world. In 2003, he was the recipient of the Kellion Award Lecture from the Australian Diabetes Society and the David Curnow Plenary Lecture from the Australian Association of Clinical Biochemists. He was awarded the 2004 UN/UNESCO Mehnert Award of the German Diabetes Union presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes congress in Munich in September 2004.

He has been a member of numerous WHO, international and national committees addressing the issue of chronic diseases and nutrition. These include the 1985 WHO Expert Committee on Diabetes, the WHO Expert Panel on Chronic Diseases and the inaugural WHO Global Scientific Advisory Committee for the INTERHEALTH Program. In 1994, he co-chaired the WHO Expert Committee on the Prevention of Diabetes. This committee produced a WHO Technical Report which has become the global "gold standard" for diabetes prevention. He was a member of the WHO Expert Committee on Obesity in 1996. That same year, he co-chaired the WHO consultation on the new criteria and classification for diabetes. In 2001, he co-chaired the IDF Expert Consultation on IGT and, in 2003, the IDF Expert Consultation on type 2 diabetes in children. In 2004, he has co-chaired the IDF Consensus Meeting on the Metabolic Syndrome.

In 1993, he was awarded the "Order of Australia" (AM) for distinguished services in medicine and education, particularly in the field of diabetes. In 2001, he was further honoured with the "Order of Australia" (AO) for services to medical research of national and international significance, particularly in the field of diabetes, as a leader of investigations into social, nutritional and lifestyle diseases, and to biotechnology development in Australia.