Carol E. Torgan, Ph.D., FACSM
Carol is an award-winning health strategist and educator with over 15 years experience in public health and medicine. Currently she brings her expertise to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she covers emerging health and science issues, develops content and outreach strategies, and translates the health and medical sciences into understandable and actionable steps for the general public and for health professionals.
Dr. Torgan has published extensively in peer-reviewed scientific journals as well as written health columns and feature articles for the general public. She routinely lectures at professional meetings and to community groups. She served as a member of the National Institutes of Health Speakers’ Bureau and as an expert medical reviewer for Health News Review. She currently serves as a media representative for the American College of Sports Medicine.
Carol received her undergraduate degree from the University of Washington, her M.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her Ph.D. degree in Kinesiology from the University of Texas. Dr. Torgan was a Research Associate and Assistant Research Professor in the Division of Cardiology at Duke University Medical Center’s Department of Medicine in North Carolina. While at Duke she developed and co-wrote grants resulting in multimillion-dollar funding from NIH and NASA and mentored and taught high school, graduate and medical students.
Carol continued her research career at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a part of the NIH, in Bethesda, Md. She had the honor of training in the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics, whose laboratory chief was Nobel Laureate Marshall Nirenberg, discoverer of the genetic code.
Dr. Torgan’s research has focused on the adaptability of skeletal muscle and has spanned from human performance to cellular biology. She has been involved with large clinical trials to investigate the effects of exercise on cardiovascular risk factors, examined the causes and prevention of muscle soreness and damage, and studied muscle adaptability at cellular and molecular levels.
To better leverage her skills and realize her desire to translate science and medicine into understandable and actionable information for a broader audience, Dr. Torgan transitioned from the lab bench to the laptop. She has developed content strategies for several institutes at NIH, as well as the NIH Office of the Director. This work has received numerous awards.
Carol joined the world of start-ups at Steve Case’s Revolution Health as senior content director, where she designed strategies to blend evidence-based information and Web 2.0 tactics into actionable information. She created two highly trafficked blogs and learned that SEM not only stands for scanning electron microscope, but also search engine marketing.
Carol’s hobbies include running and cycling the trails of Washington, D.C., and the mountains of Colorado. Learn more about Carol’s background:
About the blog
Kinetic: Of, relating to, or produced by motion.
Our bodies are in perpetual motion, from the winding and unwinding of our coiled DNA to the beating of our hearts and accelerating of our limbs. In the blog Kinetics I explore, debate and celebrate the body as we sense, move and adapt. Key areas of focus include everything that ranges from the lab bench to the park bench: science, health, design, technology, art, play and the intersection of them.
