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Dr. Urban is a native Texan, born in Victoria, Texas. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry and Medical Degree from Texas A&M University. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and Endocrinology fellowship at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Dr. Urban joined UTMB in 1990. He has served as Fellowship Program Director and Division Director of the Endocrinology Division. In 2000, he founded and directed the Nelda C. & H.J. Lutcher Stark Diabetes Center. From 2005 to early 2018, he served as Professor and Chair of Internal Medicine. Since March 2018, he has served as Vice Dean, Clinical Research in the School of Medicine. In September of the same year, he was named Vice President and Chief Research Officer.

Dr. Urban is a Fellow, American College of Physicians and a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha, the Endocrine Society, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Clinical and Climatological Association. He has received the NIH Clinical Associate Physician Award and served on NIH Study Sections.

Dr. Urban has 130 peer-review publications. He is the Principle Investigator of UTMB's Clinical Translational Science Award. He has three major research interests funded by NIH and foundations such as the McCoy Foundation and Moody Endowment. The projects include expansion of human umbilical cord blood stem cells to provide progenitors for granulocytes to fight infection (recently funded by an NIH STTR grant), use of cycled doses of testosterone in disease and aging to prevent the loss of skeletal muscle mass, and defining a new syndrome- Brain Injury Associated Fatigue and Altered Cognition (BIAFAC) that develops after brain injury and can be alleviated with growth hormone treatment.