Faculty

Dr. Brown's research focuses on behavioral interventions for diabetes and cardiovascular disease prevention in at-risk maternal and adult populations. This work targets meaningful patient engagement in preventive health behaviors, such as life-long healthy eating, physical activity, and weight management behaviors; and engagement in preventive healthcare services, such as recommended diabetes screening in healthcare systems. Her work also examines engagement in clinical research itself, such as strategies to improve participation in randomized clinical trials.

Dr. Hurrell’s lab explores the dynamic interplay between nutrition, metabolism, and immune regulation, focusing on how specific nutrients and metabolic pathways influence the development and function of immune cells in both health and disease, particularly asthma and allergy. Utilizing a variety of cutting-edge mouse models, including genetically engineered strains, specialized diets, and established asthma models, his team investigates the impact of dietary factors on immune responses and asthma pathogenesis. By applying techniques such as flow cytometry, transcriptomics, and metabolomics to profile immune cell populations and their metabolic states, the lab aims to identify innovative dietary strategies that can modulate immune function and improve lung health.

Dr. Adams is the Scientific Director of the Center for Alimentary and Metabolic Science and he is the Director of the Nutrition for Transformative Healthcare Program in the School of Medicine. His expertise is metabolic physiology and integrative nutritional science, using cell and animal models, human studies research, and “big data” analytical approaches. The lab focuses on mechanisms linking diet, physical activity, and molecular signals from the gut microbiota with metabolism, inflammation, and type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Hall's research focuses on the assessment of zinc nutritional status and its relationship to health through the life course. Dr. Hall’s interests include the development of novel biomarkers of zinc-dependent functions, and the application of zinc tracer methodologies towards the determination of dietary zinc absorption and cellular utilization.

Dr. Cremonini's research focus on the effect of polyphenols consumption, especially epicatechin and anthocyanins, on metabolic-associated disorders. She uses cell and animals models and also clinical trials to investiagate the beneficial effects of these bioactives at the cellular level of the gastrointestinal tract (i.e., permeability, inflammation, and microbiota), which secondarily can mitigate obesity-associated pathologies, such as diabetes, steatosis and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Dr. Nommsen-Rivers (she/her) is the director of the Maternal and Child Nutrition Master of Advanced Study program and the UC Davis Human Lactation Center. Her program of research aims to strengthen the evidence base for supporting optimal clinical management of lactating parent-infant dyads. Her current work focuses on physiologic factors that influence milk production during lactation.

Building on her extensive experience in maternal and child nutrition and dietetics, Dr. Nichols conducts interdisciplinary women’s health research in two primary areas at the intersection of dietetics, reproductive epidemiology, and cardiometabolic health. First, she investigates the nutritional, biological, and social aspects of the preconception period through the first 1000 days with a translational emphasis on modifiable determinants that affect the lifecourse. Second, leveraging longitudinal data, Dr. Nichols examines sex as a biological variable and the extent to which reproductive risk factors (e.g., infertility, pregnancy loss, reproductive senescence) are associated with body composition, cardiometabolic health, and the origins of disease among female individuals in midlife.

Dr. Michele La Merrill studies the developmental basis of environmental disease. Her group is particularly interested in understanding susceptibilities to disease that may result from environmental insults during development, from poor diet and ensuing metabolic diseases, and from genetic and epigenetic predispositions.

Dr. Zhang's research seeks to elucidate the molecular mechanisms for the health effects of dietary and/or environmental compounds, in order to better understand their metabolic individualities, address inter-individual susceptibilities, and clarify their health effects.

Dr. Snodgrass's research is focused on understanding how diet and nutritional and metabolic status shape innate immune function. Active research areas include: 1) investigating how metabolic status influences innate immune cell frequencies and phenotypes; 2) investigating the impact of diet and stress on cardiovascular risk factors and innate immune cell phenotypes; 3) investigating how microbiota-derived metabolites, which can be influenced by our diet, contribute to innate immune cell function.