His academic research primarily focuses on obesity and nutritional risk factors for diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, as well as translation for population prevention, economics, public policy, and global health.
After completing his undergraduate degree at The Johns Hopkins University with Honors in Public Health and election to Phi Beta Kappa, he earned his dual doctorate in epidemiology and doctorate in nutrition at age 23 from Harvard University, where he was the youngest graduate from his doctoral programs. At Harvard, Eric has taught and lectured in more than a dozen graduate and undergraduate courses, for which he received the Derek Bok Distinction in Teaching Award from Harvard College.
In addition to teaching, he has published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, and others. His more than 3 dozen publications have received over 1500 external citations, garnering an H-INDEX scientific impact factor of 16. He currently also serves as an appointed expert committee member on Nutritional Expert Group of the World Health Organization's Global Burden of Disease Project. He also served as Director of Epidemiology for MicroClinics International, a Google funded NGO. Additionally, he was a 2010 Google TECH TALK keynote speaker.
He is an elected Fellow of the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation for his key role in leading a two-year-long investigation into the controversial drug safety of VIOXX that drew national attention. Highlighted and priority published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), as chief author, Eric was recognized and named in the New York Times and USA Today. In 2004, for his tobacco control initiatives, he received the Health Commissioner's Commendation Award from the Baltimore City Health Department.
A lifelong cancer prevention advocate, and overcoming a large tennis-ball sized tumor, he founded the Campaign for Cancer Prevention, and was featured in Newsweek. As director of the Campaign, currently with over 6 million members, he was profiled in the books, CauseWired (Wiley 2008), Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business (Portfolio Penguin 2010), and Shift & Reset (Wiley 2011). To date, his efforts have raised $400,000 in public funding for cancer research.
