Obesity and Metabolic Health Lab

News and Announcements

OMHL graduate students Akheruzzaman, Siddik, Webster, Dhanasekara, and Yaqiong presented their research at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Nutrition ,2019 in Baltimore, MD.

Harsh Shah, OMHL graduate student, won first prize in the 18th Annual Graduate Student Research Poster Competition held on March 26, 2019 and second prize in the 5th Annual Obesity Research Institute meeting and Oral/Poster Competition held on May 8, 2019, for his poster titled "An Insulin independent approach to stimulate insulin signaling pathway".

Prospective Students

Undergraduate students interested in getting research experience in the areas of obesity, NAFLD, and Alzheimer's in the Obesity and Metabolic Health Laboratory, please contact Dr. Vijay Hegde.

Graduate students interested in pursuing a Master's or Doctoral degree in Nutritional Sciences in Obesity and Metabolic Health Laboratory, please contact Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar or Dr. Vijay Hegde.

Overview

Although obesity or diabetes appear deceptively simple to treat, they are serious chronic diseases. Decades of research has demonstrated that simple recommendations such as "just eat less" or "just exercise" are not effective in real life for addressing these diseases, even if demonstrated to be effective in research settings. Hence, our mission is to contribute to developing more effective prevention or treatment strategies for people suffering from obesity, diabetes or closely related conditions. While nutrition plays a big role in these diseases, there are other factors that interact with nutrition to influence metabolism. We investigate the interplay of many such non-nutritional influences with nutritional factors to advance our mission. We employ various techniques and assays such as molecular biology studies, body composition determination, regulation of satiety and hunger, and fMRI studies, to cell, tissue, animal or human models, in pursuit of our mission.