Bob was originally inspired by his uncle to shift his career plan from mathematics and engineering to become a physician. But it was a cassette tape on biochemistry from Jeff Bland in the early 80's that planted the seed that would eventually lead him to us 15 years later, where he would become a full-fledged functional medicine practitioner.

This MD is board-certified in internal medicine and has a PhD in nutritional biochemistry and metabolism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a Major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, he served as chief of medicine at the U.S. Army hospitals in Berlin, Germany and Italy. He has later acting chief of nephrology at Soroka Medical Center in Israel, where he was introduced to functional medicine by a mentor. And the transition began.

When he returned to the U.S., his career took on a nutritional focus. He was the director of clinical nutrition for more than 15 years at Boston Medical Center, and served as chief of nutrition at Boston's Jewish Memorial Hospital. He was also associate clinical professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine (where he still serves as an adjunct associate professor), and was a nutritional sciences faculty member at the Henry M. Goldman School of Graduate Dentistry.

In 1998, he took a year-long sabbatical to work with his second mentor Jeff Bland—and never left us. In addition to helping conduct clinical studies (20 and counting) and individual case management studies at the FMRC, he also serves as the director of education for the Institute for Functional Medicine nearby. He sums up his experience here as "years that have never been boring"—which just goes to show how exciting our research can be.

Bob has authored and co-authored numerous papers and book chapters, and serves on the editorial board for Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal. He's also lectured on topics that include parenteral nutrition, obesity, fatty acid metabolism, healing and repair of acute myocardial infarction, trace element deficiency, and implementing therapeutic lifestyle changes in clinical practice.