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College of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Award Winner: Robert H. Eckel, MD

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4 minute read May 6, 2013

Each year the College of Medicine Alumni Association recognizes outstanding alumni though the Distinguished Alumni Awards. The award recognizes MD graduates of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine for achievements in the areas of basic research, education, clinical care, health service administration, and public and/or civic duties.

This year's winners, Robert Eckel and Peter Raff Mueller, MD, were recognized at the 2013 Reunion, held April 11-13.


Over three decades in his career as a physician scientist, Robert H. Eckel, MD, has focused his attention to research and treatment of one of the most pressing health issues of our time: the relationship between nutrition, body weight, metabolic disorders and cardiovascular disease.
 
Eckel is currently Professor of Medicine with joint appointments in Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes and Cardiology, and Charles A. Boettcher II Endowed Chair in Atherosclerosis at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center (UCAMC). Since joining the medical center’s faculty in 1979, he has become the model for interdisciplinary partnership:  holding joint or adjunct appointments in biochemistry; physiology and biophysics; clinical pharmacy; and integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, as well as a joint appointment in the Colorado State University Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition.

Eckel’s current research is focused on the relationship between nutrition, insulin action, energy balance and body weight regulation in both human and animal models. His NIH-funded projects have also focused on the broad area of preventive cardiology and, at UCAMC, he is leading the development of a program in the prevention of heart attack and stroke. 

Eckel came to Cincinnati in 1965, earning a Bachelor of Sciences Cum Laude in Bacteriology before entering UC’s College of Medicine, where he became a member of the honor society Alpha Omega Alpha. 

He completed both an internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Wisconsin before performing a senior fellow in metabolism and endocrinology at the University of Washington School Of Medicine in Seattle.

Throughout his career, Eckel has served as a contributor to 223 peer-reviewed published papers,  49 chapters, books and reviews and had over 200 abstracts presented at national and regional meetings.

He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American College of Physicians and the American Heart Association. In 2010, the AHA awarded Eckel their Gold Heart Award, the organization’s highest volunteer honor, recognizing his ten-plus years of dedication to the AHA, including service on the national board of directors and as AHA president from 2005–06.

The American Society for Nutrition awarded him their Robert H. Herman Award in 2011, the same year he received the Outstanding Obesity Journal Research Article from The Obesity Society for his paper, "Fat Redistribution Following Suction Lipectomy: Defense of Body Fat and Patterns of Restoration.”

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