Saame Shaikh
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Nutrition and obesity questions span many scales: individual molecules and genes, whole patients, entire communities. Researchers at each scale often use different methods and vocabularies.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
nutrition
obesity
nutrigenomics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Lead and coordinate the Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC), which links 136 basic, clinical and population scientists, through an Administrative Core handling strategic planning, finances and oversight of the research cores.
- Run a Pilot and Feasibility Program that gives seed funding to young investigators so they can develop competitive nutrition and obesity research proposals.
- Provide shared genomic, gut microbiome and metabolic phenotyping services for human, mouse and cell studies, including RNA sequencing, 16S rRNA sequencing and studies of energy balance.
- Support nutrition education for medical students and physicians, and share members' findings, through the center's Enrichment Program.
More about the research
That can slow progress on problems like obesity and diet-related disease. This grant supports a campus-wide center built on the theme "Interdisciplinary Nutrition Research: From Molecules to Public Health." It links basic, clinical and population scientists so they can share tools and ideas.
Why it matters
Obesity and poor nutrition drive many chronic health problems. By giving scientists shared access to sequencing, microbiome, metabolic and molecular-profiling services, and by funding early-career pilot projects, the center could speed up research linking diet, genes and the gut microbiome to health. It could also help move findings from lab studies into clinical and public health work aimed at improving health outcomes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Minghua Tang
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine how meat-, dairy- and plant-based complementary diets affect infant growth from 5 to 12 months in a 300-infant randomized controlled feeding trial with longitudinal growth and body composition measures.
Tannaz Moin
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Link diabetes translation research expertise across Southern California institutions and the VA to support new partnerships within and between institutions and with regional and national partners.
Joyce Lee
University of Michigan, MI·Public Health & Epidemiology
Facilitate access to real-world data, including electronic health records, insurance claims and pharmacy claims at health-system, state and national levels, to study nutrition and obesity outcomes across the life course.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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