Dr. Eduardo Hebel Weiss was born on November 9, 1954 in Chile and went to the German School (“Colegio Alemán”) in Valdivia.
He was admitted to the Universidad Austral de Chile where he graduated in medicine and came to the Faculty of Medicine at the Universidad de La Frontera in 1982. Later, he specialized in Pediatric Gastroenterology at University of Giessen and Frankfurt in Germany, where he also finished his PhD studies, and went on with his advanced training in Pediatric Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of Chicago, University of London, King´s College Hospital and the University of Alabama, and his advanced training in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Toronto in Canada.
He has been working at the Universidad de La Frontera as the Director of the Department of Pediatrics, parallel to being the head of the Pediatrics Service at the Regional Hospital in Temuco. After that, he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in 2005, until 2014, when he started to work as the Vice-rector for Research and Graduate Studies. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the university and on August 13, 2018, he assumed his new office as the Rector of the Universidad de La Frontera for a period of four years.
Academically, he is an Associate Professor. He started to participate in congresses in Latin-America, the USA, Canada and Europe in the 1980´s and since 1982, he has been actively participating as a speaker and lecturer in a large number of congresses, courses and workshops in Latin-America and Spain, and has taught in several events in Chile and El Salvador. His fields of research are Pediatric Gastroenterology and Functional Abdominal Pain, Carnitine Deficiency, Chronic Diarrhea and Parasites, Clinical Epidemiology and Research Designs. He has been working on different research projects and has a large list of publications. In 2010, he also worked as a project evaluator for FONDECYT Research Initiation Projects.
He received several awards as an acknowledgement for his excellent work, starting with the first one in December 1983, when he was awarded by the Universidad de La Frontera for the best research work presented by a physician on a scholarship at the V. Medical Seminar in Cautín, Chile. After that, in August of 2003, he received an acknowledgement Certificate for his participation and contribution in scientific activities at the branch office Biobío of the Chilean Pediatric Society, and in February 2011 he was acknowledged with the IOCIM 2011 “Global Award for Excellence in Health Education” by the International Organization for Training and Medical Research. His latest recognition was a SpecialtyCertificate by the Chilean Autonomous Corporation for Certification of Medical Specialties (CONACEM) in 2012.
He is also a member of different scientific associations, such as the Chilean, the German, the Colombian and the Latin-American Pediatric Societies. Since 1992, he organized and coordinated different scientific events in Chile, and in 1999-2000 he was appointed by ASOFAMECH to be part of the Elaborating Committee and the Executive Committee for the Medical Licensing Examination in Chile.