Rahmouni and Abel named co-directors of the Obesity Research and Education Initiative

The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine has announced the appointment of Kamal Rahmouni, PhD, and Dale Abel, MD, PhD, as co-directors of the Obesity Research and Education Initiative (OREI).

Rahmouni, who is a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology and who serves as the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Center Research Endowed Chair, is internationally recognized for his fundamental research on central neural mechanisms of obesity and its complications.

Abel is the chair and DEO of the Department of Internal Medicine and director of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center (FOEDRC).

The appointment of Rahmouni and Abel builds on the close synergy between the OREI and FOEDRC in the sponsorship of Frontiers, a vibrant weekly research seminar in obesity, diabetes, and 

metabolism, and the FOEDRC/Obesity Chalk Talks, an informal monthly forum focused on developing applications for research grants.

Rahmouni and Abel succeed the co-founding directors of the OREI: Allyn L Mark, MD, professor emeritus in the Department of Internal Medicine, and Charles Brenner, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry.   

Since the OREI was established with UI Provost funding as a faculty cluster program in 2011, it has been involved in the recruitment of 13 faculty in five different colleges and nine departments, with new extramural research funding to these new faculty exceeding $30 million by 2019. Through a partnership with funding from the FOEDRC, the Carver College of Medicine has assumed the sponsorship of the OREI as an intercollegiate, interdepartmental research and education initiative focused on obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disease.