Four experts to present obesity-related research at symposium

Athens, Ga. – The third annual UGA Obesity Initiative Research Symposium, featuring oral and poster presentations and four keynote speakers, will be held at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries on Feb. 10, 2023.

Following a welcome from Jamie Cooper, director of the UGA Obesity Initiative and William P. “Bill” Flatt Professor in Nutritional Sciences within the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, the symposium will offer a mix of graduate student oral presentations and presentations from keynote speakers in the morning and afternoon sessions.

A graduate student poster presentation will run throughout the lunch break. Student competitors will vie for prizes of up to $500 in the poster competition and $1,000 in the oral competition.

This year’s keynote speakers will be Andrea Richardson of the Pardee RAND Graduate School; Seth Creasy from the University of Colorado; Kathryn M. Ross of the University of Florida; and Chad Paton from UGA.

“We’re excited to host this event again and look forward to so many excellent presentations,” Cooper said. “We have four keynote speakers with expertise covering basic science, clinical, behavior and policy work, so we look forward to hearing about their innovative obesity-related research.”

Richardson is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research focus is nutrition epidemiology and encompasses the social and biological risk factors that underlie obesity throughout the life course.

Creasy is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes at the University of Colorado – Anschutz Medical Campus. He is currently funded by a National Institutes of Health Career Development Award focused on understanding how patterns of physical activity, sleep and food intake behaviors are related to long-term weight loss.

Ross is an associate professor in the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology and in the Social and Behavioral Sciences concentration in the College of Public Health and Health Professions at the University of Florida. Ross’s research focuses on the prevention and treatment of adult obesity, with particular emphasis on improving the long-term maintenance of weight loss and developing effective behavioral weight management interventions that can be disseminated on a public-health level.

Paton is an associate professor in Food Science and Technology within the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the Department of Nutritional Sciences within the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

His lab’s research focuses on understanding the role of nutritional factors that regulate metabolic activity. Some of the methods employed are mouse models of diet-induced obesity, exercise or gene knockout/overexpression to study nutrient mediated control of fatty acid oxidation, glucose uptake and insulin signaling.

To see the full itinerary, learn more about the speakers, and register to attend, visit https://obesity.uga.edu/third-annual-obesity-initiative-research-symposium/.

Lunch will be catered by Marti’s at Midday.