- GGNB Alumni
Class of 2016
Major Professor: Charles Stephensen
Research Interests:
I'm interested in the relationships between vitamin supplementation and immune responses. More specifically, I'm interested in how vitamin A, and other retinoids, exert an influence on the developing immune system and intestinal microbiota of infants, especially in the context of vaccine responses.
Bio: When I left the military, I wanted to go into medicine. But, while working at a health store, I became keen on the metabolism of vitamins and minerals and how they impact our health and development, and how we even came to know about these compounds. Ultimately, I settled on nutrition because it explores so much of who we are - the metabolism of nutrients and how this affects our development; the psychology of eating and how this influences what and why we eat the things we do; the philosophical component of diet and dietary traditions and how they influence public health policy, for better or for worse.