Advisory Board

Balz Frei

Dr. Balz Frei is a Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Director and Endowed Chair of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, USA.

Dr. Frei’s research interests include the role of vitamins, micronutrients, and other dietary constituents in promoting optimum health and preventing disease, in particular atherosclerosis and heart disease; the role of oxidative stress and inflammation in human health and disease; and the protective effects of dietary antioxidant and anti-inflammatory factors. He has made important contributions to our understanding of the biological mechanisms and health effects of vitamins C and E, coenzyme Q10, lipoic acid, and dietary flavonoids.

Dr. Frei has published over 200 scientific papers that have been cited over 17,000 times by his peers (h-index = 66).  His research has been continuously funded since 1993 by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). He currently serves as program director of the NIH program project grant, “Center of Excellence for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Antioxidant Therapies,” which was initially awarded in 2003 and competitively renewed in 2008. He has received numerous awards, including the Distinguished Service Award of the Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine (2004), for which he served as President from 2002-04; the Discovery Award from the Medical Research Foundation, Oregon Health & Science University (2005); the Denham Harman Distinguished Lectureship in Biomedical Gerontology, University of Nebraska (2010); and the Distinguished Professor Award from Oregon State University (2010).

Dr. Frei studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland, where he received his doctorate in biochemistry. He completed a postdoctorate fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, with Dr. Bruce N. Ames, and then was Assistant and Associate Professor, respectively, at the Harvard School of Public Health and Boston University School of Medicine. He joined the Linus Pauling Institute as Director and Endowed Chair in 1997.

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