Eugene P. Orringer received his M.D. from the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh in 1969. He then moved to Chapel Hill where, in 1975, after training in both Internal Medicine and Hematology, he joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine. Dr. Orringer was promoted to Associate Professor in 1979 and to Professor in 1986. He served as the Program Director of UNC's NIH-funded General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) for a ten year period that began in 1989. In 1999, he was named to his present position as Executive Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Faculty Development in the School of Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Dr. Orringer's research activities have focused primarily on the membrane transport properties of the normal human erythrocyte and on its disordered physiology in a variety of pathological states, especially the sickle hemoglobinopathies. Dr. Orringer received a Research Career Development Award from the NHLBI in 1982, and he has held peer-reviewed grant support for the past 22 years. Upon assuming the Directorship of UNC's GCRC, Dr. Orringer began to focus more and more of his efforts on clinical and translational research. He was a national leader in the NIH-funded clinical trials that demonstrated the ability of hydroxyurea to reduce the frequency and severity of the episodes of painful vaso-occlusion and acute chest syndrome that are experienced by patients with sickle cell anemia. He is currently working on the development of a variety of novel pharmacological agents that appear quite promising in this clinical setting.

In addition to his own research activities, Dr. Orringer has been consistently involved in the training of young investigators. He has for years been a participant in numerous NIH-funded postdoctoral training programs. He has been actively involved in the development of new training opportunities and the establishment of career paths for postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty members, particularly those seeking to become clinical investigators. In 1993, Dr. Orringer and the UNC GCRC competed successfully for a "Task Award" contract from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

An important component of this award was a training program with slots for postdoctoral fellows with an interest in and commitment to environmental health and medicine. In 1995, Dr. Orringer assumed the Directorship of the UNC MD-PhD Program that, under his leadership, has grown from 12 to 62 students. Two years after assuming this new role, Dr. Orringer and his team competed successfully for a Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) grant from the NIH, an award that has enabled the enrollment in the UNC MD-PhD Program to grow to its current level of 62 students. This MSTP grant was recently re-funded with a doubling of the number of slots over the next five years. Finally, Dr. Orringer has played a major role in the development of UNC's Clinical Research Curriculum (K30) Program.

In addition to the MSTP Award, Dr. Orringer is currently the Principal Investigator on numerous grants and contracts. A notable example is a K12 award from NICHD that is entitled: Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (or BIRCWH). This award provides support at any one time for 5 or six junior faculty members committed to research careers in an area that is broadly defined as "Women's Health." He is also the PI on a second K12 award, this one funded by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). This new K12 award is entitled: Mentored Clinical Research Scholar Program Award. The resources from this new grant bring to UNC an institutional career development program designed to enable physicians and dentists to develop the skills needed to become independent, patient-oriented clinical investigators. Finally, Dr. Orringer and Dr. Marilyn Telen, his counterpart at Duke University, recently competed successfully for a Duke-UNC Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center. This five year award from NHLBI supports a variety of basic and clinical research projects at these two institutions.

Dr. Orringer has served as a member (and Chairperson) of the NIH Sickle Cell Disease Advisory Committee, as a member of the NIH GCRC Study Section, and as the President of the National GCRC Program Directors' Association. He currently serves on the North Carolina Governor's Council on Sickle Cell Disease, chairing the Medical Care & Research Committee. In addition, he is a member of the Board of Directors of both the Association of Patient Oriented Research (APOR) and the Academic Health Centers Clinical Research Forum. Dr. Orringer is an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Hematology, and he is a member of the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Medical Sciences.