David Kroll PhD

Dr. David Kroll returned to the CU Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in January, 2019, as Professor of Natural Products Pharmacology & Toxicology and Director of Master’s Degree and Certificate Programs in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Dr. Kroll began his independent academic career here in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1992 as Assistant Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology, and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1999. He then conducted sabbatical research during the 2000 calendar year in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Duke University in Durham, NC. That year, Dr. Kroll also became the first School of Pharmacy faculty member to be elected to the system-wide CU President’s Teaching Scholar Program.

After returning to CU in 2001, family medical issues led him to relocate to North Carolina where he was Senior Research Pharmacologist in the Natural Products Laboratory at Research Triangle Institute (RTI International) until 2008. Dr. Kroll then became Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at North Carolina Central University in Durham, an historically Black college/university (HBCU) in the University of North Carolina system, until the end of 2011. Dr. Kroll’s laboratory was continuously funded by research grants from the National Institutes of Health or the American Cancer Society during this time, where his team investigated plants, bacteria and fungi for novel anticancer drugs and dietary supplements that might interact with those drugs.

Dr. Kroll’s interest in public science communication and service to the MS in Medical and Science Journalism program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2004 to 2012 led him to transition into freelance and institutional science writing and public science engagement as Director of Science Communication at the then-new Nature Research Center of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. His position there from 2012 through 2014 was jointly supported by the Department of English at North Carolina State University, where he taught graduate courses in science and environmental writing and an undergraduate course in the basic principles of news reporting.

Outside of academia, Dr. Kroll was also an early science blogger, with his Terra Sigillata natural products pharmacology blog joining the ScienceBlogs network in 2006, named that year by Nature as one of the top 50 blogs worldwide written by practicing scientists. His blogs have also been hosted by the American Chemical Society and PLOS.

From 2014 to 2018, Dr. Kroll devoted himself exclusively to full-time freelance medical journalism with clients that included Reuters, the American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), and the Research Triangle’s alt-weekly, INDY Week. Dr. Kroll was also a regular contributor from 2011 to 2018 to the Pharma, Healthcare & Innovation section of Forbes.com. Throughout his 30-plus-year career, Dr. Kroll has connected with general audiences through multiple appearances on the NPR radio show, The People’s Pharmacy with Joe & Terry Graedon, and in his service as an expert source to ABC World News Tonight, NBC News, CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight, The Denver Post, The (Raleigh, NC) News & Observer, The Colorado Sun, and television stations across the US, Canada, and China.

The opportunity to return to the CU Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2019 now allows Dr. Kroll to meld his passion for graduate and professional education with the skills he gained in communicating complex drug and medical topics to general audiences. Dr. Kroll’s background in natural products pharmacology contributed to the school’s development of several educational programs for scientists and health care practitioners on medical cannabis and the risks and potential benefits of products made from the medicinal plant.

Throughout his career, Dr. Kroll’s philosophy has been that all scientists and health care professionals have responsibilities not only to their professional communities, but to society at-large, engaging with citizens and other diverse stakeholders to navigate through the complex social and economic issues of health and wellness in global society.