Robert H. Eckel MD

Dr. Eckel is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and former Charles A Boettcher II Endowed Chair in Atherosclerosis, Professor of Medicine Emeritus with previous appointments in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes and the Division of Cardiology, and in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine Anschutz Medical Campus, and former Director of the Lipid Clinic at the University of Colorado Hospital.  He was also the Program Director of the National Center for Advancing Sciences (NCATS) Clinical Translational Research Center Network of the Colorado Clinical Translational Sciences Institute, and served as Program Director of the Adult General Clinical Research Center at the University of Colorado for 15 years. In addition, Dr. Eckel was a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Past President of the Obesity Society, American Heart Association American Diabetes Association. His NIH funded research has focused on the pathogenesis and treatment of lipid disorders, obesity, the metabolic syndrome, diabetes and most recently neurodegenerative diseases. Studies in animals and humans have been directed towards dissecting the impact of nutrition/hormones on lipid and carbohydrate fuel partitioning and energy balance.  In humans, Dr. Eckel has examined the nutritional/metabolic predictors of weight change, lipid disorders, inflammation, and atherosclerosis.  In the laboratory, he has used genetically modified mice with tissue-specific overexpression or deletion of lipid-related genes and tissue culture to address similar issues in more extensive and mechanistic detail.  Overall, Dr. Eckel’s research has been targeted to uncovering basic mechanisms of how metabolic diseases relate to cardiovascular diseases in hope that the data to be gathered will lead to more favorable diagnostics and therapeutics to follow. Over his years in research, Dr. Eckel has published just short of 400 peer-reviewed manuscripts and mentored over 50 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom are in full-time academic positions today.