University of Iowa News Release

July 3, 2007

Sigmund To Receive Corcoran Award From American Heart Association

Curt D. Sigmund, Ph.D., professor of internal medicine and molecular physiology and biophysics in the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, has been named the recipient of the 2007 Arthur C. Corcoran Memorial Lecture Award from the Council for High Blood Pressure Research of the American Heart Association (AHA).

Sigmund will receive the honor and give a lecture during the AHA's 61st annual High Blood Pressure Research Conference Sept. 26-29 in Tucson, Ariz.

A UI faculty member in internal medicine (cardiology division) and molecular physiology and biophysics since 1991, Sigmund serves as director of the UI Transgenic Animal Facility. He also leads the Roy J. Carver Program of Research Excellence in the Functional Genomics of Cardiovascular Disease and the UI Center for Functional Genomics of Hypertension. The center recently received a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the regulation of blood pressure in hypertension and the mechanisms causing hypertension associated with obesity. Sigmund's research interests include examining the genetic basis of hypertension, renal and neural mechanisms causing hypertension, and the regulation of blood vessel function by molecules that control the expression of genes.

Sigmund received a master's degree in biology in 1984 and a doctorate in molecular and cellular biology in 1987 at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He served as a research affiliate from 1987-88, and as a postdoctoral fellow from 1988-1991, at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.

The Arthur C. Corcoran Memorial Lecture Award was established in 1977 in honor of Arthur Curtis Corcoran, whose major achievement was his early application of clearance methods in hypertensive patients and animals.

STORY SOURCE: University of Iowa Health Science Relations, 5139 Westlawn, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1178