Dr. David York is the USTAR Director for the Center for Advanced Nutrition at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. He joined USU on August 1st 2006 after spending 16 years at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, a part of Louisiana State University, where he was Associate Executive Director for Basic Research for much of that time. Prior to this he had a faculty position in the University of Southampton Medical School in England. Dr York has been President of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO) and currently is Treasurer and Executive Council member of the International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO). His major research interests are in animal models of obesity, central and peripheral mechanisms controlling food intake and macronutrient selection, the biology of enterostatin, the glucocorticoid-dependence of animal obesities and the role of exercise in preventing neurodegeneration.

Tim is Professor & Associate Department Head of Biology and serves as the Associate Director of the Center for Advanced Nutrition. He received B.A. degrees in Biology & Psychology from the University of California-San Diego (1981) and his Ph.D. from the University of California-Davis (1991) in Dr. Martin Wilson's lab. He did a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratories of Dr. Sue Kinnamon and Dr. Stephen Roper at Colorado State University from 1991-1993. From 1993-2000, Tim was Ass't/Associate Professor of Neurobiology at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Louisiana State University. He relocated to Utah State University in August 2000, where he thrives in the low humidity.

Michael Lefevre arrived as a USTAR professor at USU's Center for Advanced Nutrition in September of 2007, from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana where he served as Chief of the Division of Functional Foods Research, as well as professor in the Division of Nutrition and Chronic Diseases. He was also an adjunct professor at the School of Human Ecology at Louisiana State University. Dr. Lefevre is a fellow of the American Heart Association, belonging to the Council on Arteriosclerosis; the Council on Nutrition, Metabolism and Physical Activity; the Council on Epidemiology and Prevention; and is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Institute of Food Technology. Additionally, he serves as a consultant for a number of major food corporations and commodity groups. He earned his doctorate in nutrition with a minor in physiological sciences from the University of California Davis. Dr. Lefevre’s major research interests are in the role of diet in the prevention and delay of chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cognitive decline with ageing.

David C. Ward is a USTAR professor in the Center for Advanced Nutrition (CAN) and shares time 20/80 between CAN and the Nevada Cancer Institute where he was appointed Deputy Director in May of 2004. Ward is internationally recognized for his research in the fields of molecular cytogenetics, cancer genetics, virology and optical imaging technology. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA and the first USU researcher to be a part of that organization. USU's Center for Advanced Nutrition is focused on exploring the impact of nutrition on such 21st century plagues as obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Ward's expertise in genetic biomarkers will strengthen CAN's ability to enter a completely new area of research that looks at the genetic side of nutrition. The end goal is to treat patients with personalized medicines designed to maximize efficacy and minimize adverse side effects. Ward's work will also complement several of USU's research emphases in the areas of autism, Alzheimer's, and hearing loss.

Sheryl Aguilar, RD, is the lead Research Dietitian for the HNRG and directly supervises and manages the research kitchen and diet counseling trials. Ms. Aguilar has 18 years experience as dietitian in the private sector. Her experience includes employment as a food service manager and clinical dietitian for a 60 bed care home/skilled nursing facility. In this capacity, she managed a staff of 11 food service workers who produced 300 meals per day, developed menus, conducted inventories and ordered all foods and supplies. For 12 years, Ms. Aguilar provided individual and group nutrition counseling. She specialized as a Certified Diabetes Educator, developing curriculum, teaching classes, speaking to groups and counseling individuals. Having worked in physician offices, assisted living facilities, with home health agencies, and in both local hospitals, she has developed a network in the medical community.

Dr. Martini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences. She studies the physiochemical and functional properties of food constituents and their relationship with sensory perception. By expanding our knowledge of how lipds crystallize under different conditions and learning to control crystallization, our laboratory works to improve sensory attributes of fats and emulsions and applies this to developing new food science technology that will lead to healthier food products for consumers.

Dr. Ilka Nemere is a Professor of Nutrition Science and Director of the Nutrition Science Program. Her duties include conducting research for publication in peer-reviewed journals, submitting grant propposals, training graduate and undergraduate researchers, reviewing manuscripts and grant proposals, serving on committees, teaching Endocrine Aspects of Nutrition Science, Molecular Methods in Nutrition Science, and Graduate Seminar.

Amy Odum is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology. Her research interests are in basic behavioral phenomena, such as response persistence, sensitivity to delayed outcomes, conditional discriminations, and environmental influences on drug effects. Her work has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Odum completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Vermont’s Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory after earning her Ph.D. and M.A. in Psychology, specializing in Behavior Analysis, from West Virginia University. She received a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Florida. Her teaching interests include basic behavior analysis and behavioral pharmacology. Dr. Odum has served on the board of editors of a number of journals and is currently Associate Editor for the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Kerstin Schroder is an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Her research interests focus on the effects of dieting and nutrition interventions among overweight and obese adults. Further, she is interested in the sensory, psychological, social, and environmental factors affecting dieting behavior. Additional research interests include the self-management of health behaviors among chronic disease populations (e.g., HIV/AIDS, coronary heart disease), and methodological approaches towards the measurement of health-related behaviors and health outcomes.

As a clinical neurospychologist, my research interests involve the study of severe cognitive deficits in the elderly. For the past twelve years, my colleagues and I have examined genetic and environmental factors that appear to influence the risk of developing severe cognitive impairments such as dementia of the Alzheimer's type. In a project funded by the National Institute on Aging, we have conducted interviews, cognitive testing, and clinical evaluations in a population of over 5,000 seniors residing in Cache County, Utah. This project has been ongoing since 1995 and has involved four county-wide screens for dementia, in addition to collecting longitudinal data on cognition, occupational history, and health and psychiatric information. Our research team has studied diverse topics of aging such as the cognitive correlates of late-life depression, the influence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease on memory and other cognitive abilities, the role of various medications in reducing the risk for Alzheimer's disease, neuroimaging correlates of cognitive impairment, behavioral disturbances in dementia, and the influence of family history of Alzheimer's disease and other genetic factors on an individual's cognitive performance.

Dr. Robert Ward is an Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Food Sciences. His research interests include potential beneficial bioactivities of the milk fat globular membrane, effects of diet on systemic lipid metabolism (including meat and milk), and small molecule metabolomics. The Ward lab is equipped with a GC-MS and GC-FID, and research activities primarily focus on measuring fatty acid from all lipid classes as well as small molecules from various biological and food matrices.

Heidi Wengreen, RD, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Nutrition at Utah State University. She completed her PhD in Nutrition and Food Sciences with an emphasis in nutritional epidemiology from USU in 2002 and joined the faculty there in 2003.

Dr. Wengreen’s research interests include examining associations between nutrition and health and disease across the lifespan. Dr. Wengreen has examined associations between protein intake and hip fracture and dietary patterns and cognitive decline and dementia among aging populations in Utah. She is a co-investigator of the Cache County Study on Memory, Health and Aging, a large prospective study of genetic and environmental factors associated with risk of Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias. In addition, Dr. Wengreen has received funding from the Department of Education to improve the nutritional education and environment for children attending school in the Cache County School District. She has collaborated on the development of the Viva Vegetables! curriculum, a sensory-based food-focused curriculum used in the Cache County School district to teach children about the benefits of eating vegetables through hands on learning experiences.

Dr. Wengreen is a member of the American Dietetic Association, the Society for Epidemiologic Research and the American Society of Nutrition. She has authored 7 peer-reviewed publications in the area of diet and disease.