Cooperative Extension Advisor, Community Nutrition & Health
Dr. Soule is a champion for innovation in community health, dedicated to designing interventions that enhance health outcomes, strengthen food security, and support economic prosperity. By leveraging emerging technologies and generative strategies, Dr. Soule advances solutions that drive systemic change. Dr. Soule integrates health education, research, and policy development to create sustainable solutions that improve quality of life for all.
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.
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.
Dr. Caswell's research interests are in dietary assessment and analysis methods and food-based nutrition interventions. Her work incorporates nutritional epidemiology, community-based nutrition research and controlled dietary studies conducted at the Western Human Nutrition Research Center.
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. Milenkovic’s research aims to demonstrate impact of nutrients on development and prevention of cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and to identify molecular and cellular mechanisms of actions underlying observed effects using multi-genomic and bioinformatic approaches. In the last 10 years his research has been particularly focused on protective effects of bioactive plant compounds, mainly polyphenols.
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. Holt’s current research interests have focused on defining the metabolic and physiologic effects of the intake of specific foods on the cardiovascular health. This includes examining the relationship between circulating metabolites and vascular and platelet responses.
Dr. Hsu's research involves studying the molecular basis of protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) in metabolic regulation. In particular, he uses state-of-the-art genetic (animal models of human disease), biochemical and pharmacological approaches to investigate the role of PTPs in diabetes and its complications.
Dr. Jiang’s research focuses on pediatric nutrition, specifically on absorption and biological roles of bioactive components in human milk, such as lactoferrin and osteopontin. She uses both cell models and animal models to investigate mechanisms by which milk derived bioactive compounds are absorbed and exert their multiple functions. In addition, she is interested in dynamic changes of milk bioactive components throughout lactation in human populations, as well as relationships between the changes and the health outcomes.
