Faculty research in the Department of Nutritional Sciences focuses on 1) understanding how nutrients and genetics interact to affect diseases like cancer, obesity, and birth defects; 2) elucidating the role of nutrition in child and maternal health; 3) examining the role of community gardens in influencing both child and family health and physical activity; and 4) dissecting the medicinal properties of specific nutrients and their affect on cell growth.
Click on the faculty name below to see additional research details.
Dr. Molly S. Bray, Department Chair
Genetics
Exercise
Macronutrient Timing
Circadian Rhythms
Obesity
Dr. Bray’s research focuses on the relationship between energy balance and lifestyle factors such as exercise, nutrition, and circadian patterns of behavior. Her recent findings related to the genetic underpinnings of exercise adherence and the relationship between timing and quality of energy intake and weight gain/metabolic health have been featured on national and international news programs, a myriad of websites, and popular news media. Dr. Bray currently leads one of the largest genetic studies of exercise adherence established to date, the Training Interventions and Genetics of Exercise Response (TIGER) study, with a total planned cohort of more than 5,000 individuals. Her research has included investigations of aerobic fitness and resting and exercise energy expenditure in children and adolescents, circadian studies of feeding and metabolic response, and clinical studies of morbidly obese adolescents undergoing bariatric surgery. A nationally recognized expert on the genetics of obesity, energy balance, and exercise response, Dr. Bray has published extensively in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals, with her work being featured at national and international scientific meetings.
Dr. Tom Brenna
Lipid Metabolism
Lipidomics
Infant Feeding
Nutritional Supplements
Malnutrition
Nutritional Sciences
Most of the work of the Brenna Lab is translational, tying basic research to biomedicine and human nutrition. Some studies are designed with particular, topical human health questions in mind, and these studies have occasionally had immediate implications. The most prominent examples of this work are animal studies to evaluate the efficacy, safety, and metabolism of food sources of polyunsaturated fatty acids. This work often employs stable isotope tracer techniques and molecular or isotope ratio mass spectrometry to probe metabolism. Other projects, particularly those that develop instrumentation and methods for mass spectrometry techniques, have a longer term payoff. They are sometimes undertaken for the challenge of making measurements that have never been possible previously, with an eye toward eventual applications. An example of this area is the development of a novel gas phase reaction for derivatization of polyunsaturated fatty acids for facile determination of double bond structure, which has found applications associated with safety of edible oils, including detection of trans fatty acids. More recent research is on nutrition of saturated branched chain fatty acids, a neglected class of dietary fatty acids. Recent work involves development of methods for more precise and rapid detection of endogenous performance enhancing drugs, particularly testosterone, as well as methods for detecting exogenous drugs.
Dr. Marissa Burgermaster
Behavior
Big Data
Diabetes
Health and Medicine
Nutritional Sciences
Obesity
Dr. Burgermaster uses data and technology to improve behavioral nutrition and health behavior change intervention design and evaluation for promoting health equity in chronic disease prevention and management. Her research applies data science and human-computer interaction methods to improve nutrition and community health.
Prior to joining UT, Dr. Burgermaster completed a postdoctoral fellowship in biomedical informatics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center where she conducted research on technologies for diabetes management among underserved New Yorkers. She was granted an early career award from the Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science at the New York Academy of Sciences to support her work developing methods for psychosocial phenotyping. She was also the behavioral nutrition lead for the CUIMC-based team that developed “Taming Type 2 Diabetes Together (T2D2),” a voice application for personalized nutrition and diabetes self-management that was a finalist in the 2017 Alexa Diabetes Challenge and the 2017 World Cup of Voice Tech in Diabetes.
Dr. Burgermaster holds a PhD in Behavioral Nutrition from Columbia University, where her research at Teachers College’s Tisch Center for Food, Education, & Policy focused on improving the evaluation of school-based childhood obesity prevention interventions. Dr. Burgermaster holds an MS in Nutrition and Food Science from Montclair State University and an MAEd in Curriculum and Instruction from The College of William & Mary. She previously had a career as a teacher and school administrator.
Dr. Jaimie N. Davis
Community Nutrition
Child Obesity
Nutrition Behavior
Maternal and Child Health
School Gardens
Dr. Davis’s research focuses on designing and disseminating nutrition, physical activity, and behavioral interventions to reduce obesity and related metabolic disorders in overweight minority children and adolescents. She has a strong background in nutrition, physical activity, body composition assessment, and metabolic testing in pediatric populations.
Dr. Davis has written numerous papers examining the role that dietary intake, specifically added sugar and dietary fiber, plays on adiposity and metabolic profiles in overweight Latino children. She has also conducted numerous clinical randomized controlled trials to examine the effects of diet and physical activity interventions on adiposity and related metabolic disease risks. She has examined the effects of diet and physical activity behaviors on cancer biomarkers, such as circulated sex hormones, fat depots and inflammatory pathways. Dr. Davis has also explored how diet interacts with genes and how these interactions influence metabolic disease risk.
She is currently conducted and testing the effects of a school and community based garden, nutrition, and cooking interventions on reductions in obesity and metabolic disease risk in minority youth.
Dr. Linda A. deGraffenried
Nutritional Sciences
Cancer
Obesity
Women's Health
The deGraffenried laboratory is part of an integrated program that encompasses basic research, cancer treatment, clinical trials, education programs and cancer prevention. The ultimate goal is to develop effective interventions, both pharmacological as well as diet and lifestyle that lower both the risk as well as aggressiveness of breast and prostate cancer, leading to improved survival for all cancer patients.
Dr. deGraffenried has been nationally and internationally recognized for her work in breast and prostate cancer. She receives funding for her work from the National Cancer Institute, the American Institute for Cancer Research, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, and the Department of Defense. She sits on several national review panels, and is an associate editor for the journal Molecular Carcinogenesis. Dr. deGraffenried’s students have received recognition for the research that they are doing in her laboratory, including full fellowships for their graduate studies as well as numerous travel awards to present their research at national meetings.
Dr. John DiGiovanni
Cancer
Nutrient-based Therapies
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Research in Dr. DiGiovanni's laboratory has focused for many years on understanding how cancer develops and on the identification of novel targets, mechanisms and strategies for cancer prevention. Cancer is a disease involving gene-environment interactions and therefore understanding both environmental influences as well as genetic factors is key to developing the most effective strategies for preventing cancer. In addition, understanding the early cellular, biochemical and molecular changes that transform normal cells into cancer cells is essential if we are to eventually eradicate cancer as a major human disease.
Dr. James Fleet
Vitamin D
Calcium and Bone Metabolism
Cancer
Intestinal Biology
Endocrinology
With more than 150 primary publications, reviews, and book chapters, as well as four currently funded projects, Dr. Fleet is among the leaders in nutritional biochemistry and cancer nutrition. He has been at the forefront of research designed to investigate the interrelationships between nutritional biochemistry, metabolism, genetics, bone development, and the etiology of cancer. His focus on the mechanisms of bone formation and cancer progression and on the immunological underpinnings of cancer defense provide unique targets for nutritional interventions that can significantly influence health outcomes. As such, his work is highly translational by providing a mechanistic foundation for population-based recommendations for bone health and cancer prevention and for determining how diet can be used as an adjunctive treatment to enhance the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy.
Dr. Jeanne Freeland-Graves
Nutritional Sciences
Obesity
Behavior
Web-based Nutrition
Global Nutrition
Micronutrient Metabolism
Dr. Freeland-Graves has focused on obesity, trace elements and food science in her academic career. Her food science textbook was used in over 100 colleges and university for four editions. Freeland-Graves is the recipient of numerous grants involving obesity, including validation of body composition and methods for detection of obesity. She has been involved with the genetic relationships of obesity with cardiovascular risk factors, liver function markers, and insulin resistance. She also has explored the nutritional, environmental and psychological and social influences on weight retention in minority, low-income women after childbirth, as well as the biological and behavioral responses of both mothers and their children to nutrition and physical activity interventions. Her work in manganese requirements was used in the current dietary recommendations for the trace element, manganese, and the development of reference doses (toxicity levels). Other research in zinc involves its relationship to metabolic syndrome, bioavailability, and taste acuity.
Dr. Ryan Gray
Genetics
Developmental Biology
Gene Editing
Metabolism
Spine and Bone Development
Single nucleotide genetics changes can act alone or in concert to affect the development or homeostasis of tissues and organ systems. The Gray lab takes an integrated approach to understanding this process combining Human genomic data with experimental modeling in zebrafish and mouse model organisms.
Currently, they focus on understanding defects of the vertebral column/ spine commonly called Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS). They utilize forward and reverse genetic approaches to identify and model AIS and employ a wide-range of molecular, biochemical, and biomedical imaging techniques to understand the pathophysiology of these genetic models of scoliosis. By considering all of these components and how they affect the spine, the Gray group hopes to build a comprehensive picture of spine development and homeostasis.
Please visit the website for more information: rsg1lab.com
Dr. Christopher A. Jolly
Aging
Nutritional Sciences
Immunology
Ketogenesis
Inflammation and Disease
Dr. Jolly's research area examines the influence of aging and diet on immune function with special emphasis on lipid metabolism and signal transduction in the T cell. The lab is currently funded by the National Institute on Aging and National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health.
His lab examines how changes in fat metabolism regulate immune function in childhood/young adulthood through old age. Currently, they are using genetically altered animal models of fat metabolism to mimic an aged immune system and analyze the impact on prostate cancer development and progression and the production of new immune cells. His researchers are combining these animal models with dietary factors like changing fat amount (diet induced obesity) and type (omega-3 fatty acids) as well as phytochemicals (resveratrol) to modulate fat metabolism to determine their effects on immune function. The ultimate goal is to identify dietary factors that regulate immunometabolism to improve immune function and subsequent health at various stages of life.
Dr. Heather Leidy
Protein Metabolism
Ingestive Behavior
Adolescents
Breakfast composition
Hormonal regulation
Dr. Leidy is one of the top leading scientists focused on energy balance, and she is an expert in the molecular basis of ingestive behavior. Importantly, she attacks the question of what drives people to eat from multiple lines of inquiry using assessments of hedonic response, brain reactivity, habitual food intake, and observed and reported dietary records. Her particular interest is in dietary protein, specifically protein ingested in the breakfast meal.
Dr. Alessia Lodi
Cancer
Metabolomics
Nutrient-based Therapies
Dr. Lodi completed her Laurea in Chemical Engineering (equivalent of a Master’s degree) in 2001 from the University of Trieste in Trieste, Italy. Early in her career, she demonstrated an interest in the chemical properties of drugs, and her early research provided the groundwork for developing expertise in the use of dynamic simulation for designing and selecting drugs and macromolecular carriers. In 2006, she completed her PhD in Food Science and Nutrition from the Ohio State University, and her dissertation research examined the physical and chemical properties of soy and almond, with four first-author publications resulting from this work. Upon completion of her PhD, Dr. Lodi applied for and was awarded a prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship, which is a highly competitive award given to the “best, most promising individual researchers from anywhere in the world,” at the University of Birmingham in Birmingham, England. Her postdoctoral fellowship introduced her to the field of advanced metabolomics in cancer treatment, under the direction of Dr. Mark Viant. Her current research uses high-throughput screening technologies to identify compounds that could be used in combinatorial cancer therapies.
Dr. Stefano Tiziani
Cancer
Nutritional Sciences
High-throughput Screening
Metabolomics
Altered cellular metabolism is a hallmark of cancer and can promote tumorigenesis, sustain tumor growth and favor cancer drug resistance. The Tiziani Lab is interested in understanding how drug-induced modulation of tumor metabolism and nutrient microenvironment affect treatment outcome. Combination therapies are often needed for effective clinical management of complex diseases. Discovery of new combinations is hampered by the vast space of possibilities created when more than a few drugs over a range of doses are considered. The goal of his research group is to combine high-throughput screening measurements, magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry-based metabolomics, metabolic flux analysis and other omic data to gain a better bio-mechanistic understanding of the effects of combined drug treatment in a disease setting. The systematic combination therapy optimization effort might provide unique information about the selectivity of the treatment towards the specific disease which can be rapidly translated in a personalized drug treatment.
The lab is also interested in oxidative stress, energy balance in diet and obesity in cancer risk. Individuals with imbalanced nutritional habits are more vulnerable to metabolic diseases. In this context, the chemical analysis of the metabolome in human biofluids and tissues can provide a wealth of information on human health, including the assessment of disease state and diagnosis, drug targets and toxicity.
Dr. Elizabeth Widen
Pregnancy
Infancy
Nutritional Sciences
Nutritional Epidemiology
Body composition
Behavior
Obesity
Dr. Widen's research program applies an interdisciplinary life course approach to the intersection of nutrition sciences with reproductive, perinatal, pediatric and nutritional epidemiology. The goal of Dr. Widen's research is to develop and apply advanced analytic methods and interdisciplinary approaches to rigorously evaluate the role of nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life on short and long-term health. Widen integrates advanced quantitative methods, nutritional assessment methods and a human biology theoretical orientation in her research. Widen currently has active projects in HIV-infected, uninfected and exposed populations in Sub-Saharan African, and among mothers and their infants in Austin and New York City. In the Austin area, she leads the Mother Infant Nutrition Study (MINT), a prospective cohort of pregnant women and their infants, and is co-PI on a family based infant feeding intervention study.
