2024 Lewis K Dahl Memorial Lecture

Dr. Pablo A. Ortiz is a senior scientist and head of the Hypertension and Vascular Research Division, an 11-faculty basic research division within internal medicine at Henry Ford Health in Detroit. He is also the scientific director of the Translational and Clinical Research Center at the Henry Ford Hospital and holds the endowed Earl Ward Chair of Hypertension. He has received funding from NIH and other agencies, including the American Heart Association, since 2006. He is a full-time affiliate professor of physiology at Wayne State University Department of Physiology. His area of research is broadly defined as the role of the kidneys in hypertension and cardiovascular disease. He has developed several molecular, biochemical and cell biology approaches to study the regulation of renal ion transport.

Dr. Ortiz’s lab recently integrated omics technologies and functional genomics to discover new molecular mechanisms of hypertension. His latest research includes studying the molecular mechanisms by which obesity, high dietary fructose or fat, in combination with a high salt diet affects renal NaCl handling to increase blood pressure and contribute to kidney diseases. He has authored over 60 publications in the last 23 years as well as mentored several PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, instructors and assistant professors, many of them from URM backgrounds. He is also one of the founding members of the Translational and Clinical Research Center (TCRC) at the Henry Ford Hospital.

For his research, Dr. Ortiz has received numerous national awards, has been invited to national and international meetings and has been a lecturer at several universities. His service includes several positions of leadership at national medical research societies including serving as chairperson of the American Heart Association Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease (KCVD) Council, the American Physiological Society Annual Conference Program Committee and the American Society of Nephrology YIA committee. He has served and been a permanent member of NIH study sections and is currently a standing member and chairperson of the NIH-NHLBI PPG parent committee. He is a member of the editorial board of the Hypertension Journal, American Journal of Physiology-Renal and associate editor of Frontiers in Renal Physiology. He has resided in the Detroit area with his family since 2002.