People: Nutrient Regulation Obesity And Diabetes
Orfeu Buxton
Elizabeth Fenton Susman Professor of Biobehavioral Health
The causes of chronic sleep deficiency in the workplace, home, and society; the health consequences of chronic sleep deficiency, especially cardiometabolic outcomes, and the physiologic and social mechanisms by which these outcomes arise. Successful aging is a central focus of this work. Ongoing interdisciplinary human studies involve sleep loss, aging, and insomnia, as well as health disparities.
Margherita Cantorna
Director of the Center for Molecular Immunology and Infectious Disease; Distinguished Professor of Molecular Immunology
Understanding the working of the immune system. Utilizing animal models of several human diseases including enteric infections and inflammatory bowel disease to determine the cellular targets and molecular signals by which dietary components regulate immunity.
Nikki Crowley
Director, Neuroscience Institute – University Park; Huck Early Career Chair in Neurobiology & Neural Engineering; Assistant Professor of Biology and Biomedical Engineering; Associate Director for Postdoctoral Training and Leadership, Center for Neural Engineering
Investigation of peptidergic transmission throughout the brain, using cell-specific and pathway-specific manipulations to understand how peptides alter neuronal signaling and behavior, particularly in the context of stress and drug use.
Erika Ganda
Emphasis Area Representative, Microbiome Sciences; Assistant Professor of Food Animal Microbiomes
Developing practical ways to leverage the microbiome to improve food safety and improve food production animals' production efficiency.
Kevin Harvatine
Associate Professor of Nutritional Physiology
Investigation of dietary factors that modify ruminal fatty acid biohydrogenation, regulation of synthesis of milk components, and basic regulation of lipid synthesis with the continual goal of developing feeding strategies to improve the efficiency and performance of dairy cows
Laura Klein
Professor of Biobehavioral Health
Biobehavioral effects of stress on drug abuse; sex differences in neuroendocrine and behavioral stress responses; nicotine regulation of stress reactivity.
Joshua Lambert
Professor of Food Science
Dietary polyphenols in prevention of obesity and fatty liver disease; efficacy and mechanisms of action of food-derived phytochemicals in prevention of lung cancer; biotransformation, bioavailability and potential hepatotoxicity of dietary phytochemicals
Impact of food and medicinal plants and phytochemicals on human health. Role of plant genetics, environmental factors, agronomic practices, and post-harvest processing in moderating the relationship between medicinal and food plants and human health
Andrew Patterson
Professor and Huck Chair of Molecular Toxicology; Faculty Oversight, Metabolomics Core Facility
The Patterson lab is focused on understanding the host-metabolite-microbiome axis
Justin Pritchard
Huck Early Career Entrepreneurial Professorship; Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering;
Using systems and synthetic biology approaches to understand and control drug resistance.
Greg Shearer
Chair, Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Integrative and Biomedical Physiology; Professor of Nutrition and Physiology
We seek to understand disease-related functional changes in the context of global changes in lipid mediators (bioactive metabolites of dietary fatty acids) and use them to identify markers of disease and better ways to prevent or manage disease
Karolina Skibicka
Huck Chair of Metabolic Physiology; Associate Professor of Nutritional Sciences
Utilizing rodent models to discover novel neural substrates that control fundamental homeostatic and reward controls of food intake, and their failures in the case of obesity and infection-induced anorexia; How food and feeding behavior affect neural circuits controlling sociability and emotionality.
