Robert W O'Rourke

Robert W. O'Rourke, MD serves as the William J. Fry Professor of Surgery in the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA with degrees in Chemical Engineering and Molecular Biology. He obtained his MD from the UCLA Medical School in Los Angeles, CA, completed general surgery residency training at UCSF in San Francisco, CA, and completed an Advanced Minimally Invasive Surgery Fellowship at Legacy Health Systems in Portland, OR. He spent ten years as faculty member and Co-Director of the Bariatric Surgery Program in the Department of Surgery at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR prior to joining the University of Michigan in 2013.

Dr. O’Rourke has dedicated his clinical and scientific career to the care of patients with obesity and metabolic disease. He manages an NIH-funded research laboratory that studies molecular and cellular mechanisms of adipose tissue dysfunction that contribute to the pathogenesis of metabolic disease. The O'Rourke lab focuses on the role of the extracellular matrix in regulating adipocyte metabolic dysfunction in the context of diabetes, macrophage and NK cell contributions to adipose tissue inflammation and metabolism, and mechanistic links between adipose tissue dysfunction and cancer in the context of obesity. The overarching goal of this work is to develop novel cellular and molecular adipose tissue-based therapies for diabetes, dyslipidemia, cancer, and other metabolic diseases.

Dr. O'Rourke currently holds clinical appointments at the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor Veterans Administration Hospital. He has served as Chief of General Surgery and Director of the Bariatric Surgery Program at the Ann Arbor VA since 2018. His primary clinical focus is minimally invasive and bariatric surgery. He is active in resident and medical student education and serves as an active member of multiple national surgical societies and on the editorial boards of the journals Obesity Surgery and SOARD.

Molecular and cellular mechanisms of adipose tissue dysfunction in the context of diabetes
Extracellular matrix-adipocyte metabolic crosstalk
Adipocyte-cancer crosstalk