Michael L. Merchant is a Professor of Medicine with an associate appointment in the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology in the University of Louisville School of Medicine.  His research focuses on the use of proteomic methods to understand acute or chronic diesease with interests in both biomarker discovery and in understanding disease mechasim.  His primary disease interests are in kidney disease and liver disease with current research addressing development and progression of kidney disease (both pediatric and adult disease), complications of end-stage disease.  An overarching goal is to understand the interaction of genes, metabolism and the environment in the development and progression of disease.  

His professional career focused on protein chemistry starting as a graduate student working with Collis Geren, PhD with the isolation and characterization of protein toxins from the venoms of the brown recluse spider and the timber rattlesnake.  He transitioned from protein chemistry to proteomics research and evolved beyond to direct the Proteomics Technology Center, or lead/co-lead multiple technology (OMICS) cores (Director of the Omics and Exposure Assessment Facility Core for the Center for Integrated Environmental Health Science; Omics Core Co-leader for the Hepatobiology & Toxicology Center of Biomedical Excellence, and for the University of Louisville Alcohol Research Center; and Co-leader for the Multiomics Technology Development Core in the Nutrition and Metabolic Health Center. 

Current and past leadership roles with the Department and School of Medicine include Division of Nephrology & Hypertision Research Director (current), Nephrology and Hypertension Fellowship Research Director (past); and Director (current) and co-director (past) for the Summer Endocrine Research Training Program.

His long collaborations and goals are to develop modern translational OMICS research program with investigators across the US and abroad.  As such he has developed the ability to (a) work with multiple disparate groups and (b) identify the requirements needed to push the scientific envelop for high-risk/high-reward translational research both aimed at understanding the fundamental biological underpinnings of human health and disease.