David M. Pollock

David M. Pollock, Ph.D. is the James A. Schafer NRTC Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cardio-Renal Physiology & Medicine Section at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Co-Director of the UAB Hypertension Research Center. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Evansville and his Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati. This was followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Pollock spent two years as an Investigator at the Institute for Circadian Physiology at Harvard University before moving to Abbott Laboratories in Chicago. There he was the in vivo pharmacologist that developed two potential treatments for hypertension, kidney failure and other diseases. In 1995, he accepted a faculty position at the Medical College of Georgia (now known as Augusta University) where he eventually became a Regents’ Professor and Head of Experimental Medicine in the Department of Medicine. In 2014, he moved to UAB to assume his current role. Dr. Pollock’s wide range of research interests focuses on high blood pressure and kidney disease primarily using rodent models. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for nearly 30 years and has also received funding support from the American Heart Association. Dr. Pollock’s lab has uncovered how high salt diets impact risk for cardiovascular disease including a critical role for endothelin-1 in facilitating the renal excretion of sodium. His lab has also provided key preclinical evidence for endothelin antagonists in the treatment of diabetic and sickle cell nephropathy. Most of his recent work has focused on circadian-related mechanisms contributing to blood pressure control and end-organ damage as well as the relationship between organ-specific molecular clocks following changes in diet. Dr. Pollock has mentored over 30 PhD students and post-doctoral fellows and 50 medical and undergraduate students. Most of his graduate students and post-doctoral fellows have received fellowships from the NIH, AHA, and other organizations. He has also served on 35 additional PhD thesis committees. Dr. Pollock has served on many NIH and AHA grant review committees that have focused on training applications and directed a T32-funded institutional training program in Vascular Biology for 10 years. Dr. Pollock has held many service leadership positions including several journal editorships and served as the 87th President of the American Physiological Society. In 2013, Dr. Pollock received the Lewis K. Dahl Award from the American Heart Association, and in 2016, was awarded the Ernst Starling Lectureship from the American Physiological Society.