Leading our Progress

Dr. Karen Peterson is the Stanley M. Garn Collegiate Professor of Nutritional Sciences, Chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences, and Professor of Global Public Health at the U-M School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the influence of biosocial and environmental influences on child growth and maturation during sensitive developmental periods, as well as the design and evaluation of population-based interventions addressing dietary and physical activity behaviors related to obesity and chronic disease in diverse populations, including children and youth. She is Contact PI for the U-M Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Protection Center on the theme: “Lifecourse exposures and diet: Epigenetics, maturation, and metabolic syndrome,” and serves as Associate Director of the Michigan Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (MNORC). She earned her ScD in Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Joyce Lee is a physician, researcher, and design thinker. She is one of the few individuals in the country with formal training in Pediatric Endocrinology and Health Services Research, and she holds a Master’s in Public Health from the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan. Dr. Lee is the Robert P. Kelch, MD Research Professor of Pediatrics at the U-M Medical School, with a joint appointment in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the U-M School of Public Health. She conducts clinical and health services research in the areas of pediatric obesity and diabetes. She can be found on twitter (@joyclee) and at her website, doctorasdesigner.com.

Sarah has been a Registered Dietitian since 2003 and currently serves as the Director of Dietetics Training for the University of Michigan School of Public Health in the Department of Nutritional Sciences. She has extensive experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating child obesity prevention interventions in child care settings and in dietary assessment methods for clinical and public health research settings. She has a personal interest in field of precision nutrition, disease prevention, and using food as medicine with the hopes of inspiring the next generation of dietitians to develop an interest in these as well. Additionally, she serves as Manager of the Nutrition, Exercise, and Phenotype Testing Core for the Michigan Nutrition Obesity Research Center and co-teaches NUTR 597: Precision Nutrition – Translating the Science to Practice.

Jeff Horowitz is a Professor in the U-M School of Kinesiology, where he directs the Substrate Metabolism Laboratory. His laboratory studies the regulation of fat, carbohydrate, and protein metabolism in humans, with particular interest in how exercise and diet affect lipid metabolism and insulin resistance in obesity. Dr. Horowitz’s laboratory focuses on identifying adaptions (at the cellular, tissue, and whole-body level) in response to exercise and/or dietary intervention that may impact important clinical outcomes, which could lead to improved methods to treat chronic diseases. Dr. Horowitz earned a BSE in Biomedical Engineering from The University of Iowa (1989), as well as an MA (1992) and a PhD (1996) in Exercise Physiology (both from The University of Texas at Austin).

Alison Miller is a developmental psychologist who studies risk and resilience in children and families. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the U-M School of Public Health, and was previously in the Department of Psychiatry (Division of Child and Family Psychiatry) at Brown Medical School. Dr. Miller is also a Research Associate Professor in the University of Michigan’s Center for Human Growth and Development. She received a BA in Psychology at Wesleyan University (1992), and earned two degrees at the University of Michigan, including an MA (1997) and a PhD (2000) in Developmental Psychology.

Edward C. Norton joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2008 as a professor in both the U-M SPH Department of Health Management and Policy and the Department of Economics. He is the Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan, as well as a Research Affiliate of the Population Studies Center. In addition to his affiliations with the University of Michigan, Dr. Norton is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Health Economics Program. Before coming to Michigan, he taught at UNC at Chapel Hill and Harvard Medical School. His research interests in health economics include long-term care, aging, and econometrics. He earned an AB in Economics at Princeton University (1986) and a PhD in Economics at MIT (1990).

Peter Song is a Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the U-M School of Public Health. His research interests include bioinformatics, longitudinal data analysis, missing data problems in clinical trials, statistical genetics, and time series analysis. He is interested in methodological developments related to modeling, statistical inference, and applications in biomedical sciences. In particular, Dr. Song’s research projects are strongly motivated from real-world data analysis. He earned a BS in Statistics from Jilin University (1985) and a PhD in Statistics from the University of British Columbia (1996).

Susan Woolford is an Associate Professor with the Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Center in the Division of General Pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School and an Associate Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education in the U-M School of Public Health. Her research interests focus on the prevention and treatment of childhood obesity with an emphasis on physician-patient communication related to behavior change. Dr. Woolford earned her medical degree at Michigan State University (1994) where she also completed her residency and chief residency.