Robert H. Eckel, MD

Dr. Eckel is the Charles A Boettcher II Endowed Chair in Atherosclerosis, Professor of Medicine with appointments in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes and the Division of Cardiology, and Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine Anschutz Medical Campus, and Director of the Lipid Clinic at the University of Colorado Hospital. He is also the Program Director of the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) Discovery Translation component of the Colorado Clinical Translational Sciences Institute, and previously served as Program Director of the Adult General Clinical Research Center at UCD for 15 years. In addition, Dr. Eckel previously 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 American Heart Association. His NIH funded research has focused on the pathogenesis and treatment of lipid disorders, obesity, the metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and obstructive sleep apnea. Studies in animals and humans are 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 uses genetically modified mice with tissue-specific overexpression or deletion of lipid-related gene expression and tissue culture to address similar issues in more extensive and mechanistic detail. Overall, Dr. Eckel's research is targeted to uncovering basic mechanisms of how metabolic diseases relate to cardiovascular and pulmonary disease in hopes that the data to be gathered will lead to more favorable diagnostics and therapeutics to follow.