Lauren Housley

Education

Job Description

Dietetic Internship Program

I am the Director of the Dietetic Internship Program at UGA. Our program is accredited by ACEND and is a graduate-level program in which students complete either a master's or doctoral degree in addition to the internship. At the end of the program, graduates are eligible to sit for the credentialing exam for registered dietitians. We partner with clinical sites, foodservice establishments, school nutrition programs, community organizations, private practices in nutrition, and UGA cooperative extension to provide rich and diverse training experiences for our interns. I am passionate about preparing students to become professionals and leaders in the field of nutrition.

Teaching

I currently teach: Fundamentals of Human Nutrition (NUTR 2100), Dietetics Practicum (NUTR 5910), Dietetics Internship: Supervised Practice and Professional Development (NUTR 7911), and Dietetic Internship (NUTR 7910). My approach to teaching is guided by immense appreciation of knowledge I have gained and a deep passion for helping others unlock their learning potential, find empowerment and purpose, and build nutrition literacy.

Research

My research areas have included diet and cancer chemoprevention, nutrient bioavailability, health benefits of phytochemicals, nutritional epigenetics, biomarker evaluation. I worked on projects investigating the health effects (including chemopreventive effects) of the dietary phytochemical sulforaphane, biomarkers of zinc nutriture, and the role of zinc and vitamin D on bone health. My most recent studies investigated the impact of sulforaphane on cytokine signaling, cancer cell proliferation and invasion within the breast tumor microenvironment and the involvement of tumor-associated macrophages. I have experience conducting human feeding studies, clinical trials, and in vitro cell culture studies to investigate sulforaphane absorption kinetics, biomarkers of response to sulforaphane, and mechanisms of sulforaphane action within tumor microenvironments, respectively. Additional research skills include separation/extraction techniques, mass spectrometry, metabolomics, proteomics, molecular biology and epigenetic techniques such as qPCR and HDAC activity assays, proteomics, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2D-SDS-PAGE), data collection and organization, and quality control. Ultimately, my interests revolve around clarifying diet and disease mechanisms to improve human disease prevention and treatment strategies.