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Dr. Slupsky's research includes understanding the impact of diet on human health from the perspective of nutrition, the gut microbiome, and host-microbial co-metabolism. She uses a multi-discplinary research approach that integrates metabolomics with clinical measures, global gene expression profiles, as well as microbial community analysis to understand the intimate link between our gut microbiome, metabolism, and health. In addition, she is looking into the implication of food processing, agricultural practices, and plant health status on the nutrient content and sensory aspects of the food we eat. These studies will provide novel insight on health management and food development, and usher us into the era of personalized nutrition.

Dr. Smilowitz has a well-established research career investigating the role of diet on the gut microbiome across the lifespan, with a particular focus on clinical nutrition and lactation during the first 1,000 days—from pregnancy through early childhood. As a Cooperative Extension Specialist with a background in lactation education, she leads collaborative, community-engaged outreach programs that support infant feeding and deliver evidence-based education on lactation and breastfeeding. Through integrated research and extension efforts, her work addresses critical gaps in health, strengthens community capacity, and advances strategies to reduce chronic disease risk.

Dr. Steinberg’s research program focuses on the physiologic effects of bioactive food components to reduce risk factors for cardiovascular and obesity-related chronic diseases. Human trials and complementary research approaches are used to study metabolic markers of lipid and lipoprotein metabolism, endothelial function, inflammation and metabolic homeostasis; with a goal to examine nutritional phenotypes of individuals responding to intakes of food phytochemicals and characterize metabolic responses which promote health and chronic disease risk reduction.

Dr. Stewart’s research focuses on the design and evaluation of nutrition and health interventions for women and young children in low income communities. She examines the effects of these interventions on growth, health, and development throughout the life course. She utilizes primarily community-based randomized controlled trials, longitudinal studies, and meta-analyses to synthesize evidence to inform improvements in programs or policy. She collaborates extensively with multi-disciplinary and multi-national teams and has had recent projects in Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Bangladesh, and Ecuador.

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. Zivkovic’s research is focused on the role of diet and nutrition in Precision Health. Precision Health emphasizes individually tailored approaches to optimize health and prevent disease. The Zivkovic Lab has four overall research themes: 1) Investigating the functional biology of HDL; 2) Assessing the effects of diets and dietary constituents on inflammation; 3) Integrating clinical, metabolomic, proteomic, glycomic, transcriptomic, and genomic approaches to characterize metabolic phenotypes and their responsiveness to different diets; and 4) Investigating the effects of diets and dietary constituents on the gut microbiota and how they in turn affect host health.

Dr. Bennett's research explores genetic components of chronic metabolic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and obesity, through integrative genetic studies, also called "systems genetics."

Dr. Bonnel is the Human Studies Manager at the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Center (WHNRC). The mission of the WHNRC is to create and test food based interventions to improve the health of all Americans.

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).