Toren received his undergraduate degree in Physics and his MD and PhD degree from Harvard Medical School. Following a residency in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he completed a fellowship in Cardiology at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1992, after completing his clinical training, he came to the NIH as an Investigator within the Intramural Research Program of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Over the next 25 years at the NIH, Toren held various positions including Chief of the Cardiology Branch and Chief of the Center for Molecular Medicine within the NHLBI. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the Association of American Physicians (AAP). He has also been inducted as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Toren serves on numerous editorial boards including currently serving on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science. As of Sept 1st 2017, he assumed the role of the Director of the Aging Institute, and the G. Nicholas Beckwith III and Dorothy B. Beckwith Endowed Chair of Translational Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh/UPMC. Toren became a Distinguished Professor of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2021.