Rudy Ortiz earned his Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, studying the endocrinology of prolonged fasting in northern elephant seal pups with a focus on renal physiology and substrate metabolism. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Physiology with Gabby Navar to study the contributions of aldosterone in the progression of Ang II-dependent hypertension.
He is a full professor of endocrinology and physiology at UC Merced with research experience among a diversity of animal taxa. Ortiz’s current research extends into the study of altered nutrition and metabolic dysfunction on cardiovascular and renal diseases and lipid metabolism in humans and rodent models as well as pharmacological manipulations of endocrine systems to dissect the contributions of AT1, insulin receptor, and redox signaling pathways. He is a current program director of National Institutes of Health (NIH) Undergraduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (URISE; T34) and USDA Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Education training grants.