David Pollock is Professor in the Division of Nephrology Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He serves as Director of the Cardio-Renal Physiology and Medicine section, a translational research program supported jointly by the Division of Cardiovascular Disease and Division of Nephrology. Pollock earned his Ph.D. degree in Physiology from the University of Cincinnati in 1983 with Robert Banks as his advisor. His thesis project comprised some of the first papers ever published on the renal actions of atrial natriuretic factor. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the direction of William Arendshorst in the world-famous micropuncture lab run by Carl W. Gottschalk. He conducted a series studies related to mechanisms of autoregulation of renal blood flow and tubuloglomerular feedback. He then spent two years as a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Circadian Physiology at Harvard University in Boston where he worked on a NASA supported project studying fluid volume regulation in a ground-based model of weightlessness. In 1989, he took a position in the Drug Discovery division of Abbott Laboratories in Chicago. While at Abbott, he worked on several projects including atrial peptide analogs, angiotensin receptor antagonists, and endothelin receptor antagonists. Most of his work focused on proof of concept studies in various animal models of hypertension and renal disease.
In 1995, Pollock moved back to academia and accepted a faculty position at the Medical College of Georgia (now known as Georgia Regents University) where he served as a faculty member in the Vascular Biology Center and eventually led the establishment of the Experimental Medicine section in the Department of Medicine. In January 2014, Pollock moved to his current position at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he is leading the development of a translational research group focusing on renal and cardiovascular physiology.
Pollock’s research has been continuously supported by a series of National Institutes of Health and American Heart Association (AHA) grants including an AHA Established Investigator Award from 2000-2005. He currently serves as Principal investigator on a Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Program Project Grant (PPG) focusing integrated control of renal water and electrolyte handling. This work is a collaborative effort with UAB faculty, Jennifer Pollock and Edward Inscho as well as Donald Kohan at the University of Utah and James Stockand at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Pollock also serves as Deputy Director and Project Leader on another NHLBI-funded PPG focusing on stress and obesity in hypertension risk. Since August of 2013, Pollock has been Co-PI of a Center Grant (U01) investigating the role of endothelin in sickle cell nephropathy in both animal models and humans. He has also held a series of investigator-initiated grants from companies including Abbott Labs, Takeda and Astra-Zeneca Pharmaceuticals and has served as a scientific advisor for Abbott, Gilead, Speedel, and Astra-Zeneca. He has served on many NIH and AHA scientific peer review panels including the AHA National Cardio-Renal study section where he served as chair and the NIH F10A panel on organ system pathophysiology reviewing individual training grants since 2005.
Pollock has authored more than 180 peer-reviewed papers along with over 40 invited reviews and commentaries and 11 book chapters including one as editor. Pollock recently completed a 6 year term as Associate Editor for the American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Comprehensive Physiology. Pollock has also served as Associate Editor of Vascular Pharmacology as well as several other guest editorships. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Physiological Reviews, The American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology, Hypertension, and Nitric Oxide: Biology and Chemistry.
Pollock has been active in a wide range of national and international organizations. He recently served as the 87th President of the American Physiological Society (APS). He is currently serving as Chair of the APS Conference Committee and has organized several conferences with APS as well as a FASEB Summer Conference, the International Conference on Endothelin, and a Forefronts Conference with the International Society of Nephrology. He serves as a founding member of the International Advisory Board for the bi-annual conferences on endothelin. Pollock has also served on numerous committees with APS and AHA.
Pollock has received a number of honors and awards including the Louis K Dahl Award for hypertension research from the AHA in 2013 and the Ernest Starling Award Lecturer in 2016. |
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