Foods for Health Research Initiative Discusses Expanded Research Focus at First Annual Meeting
The first annual meeting of the Foods for Health Research Initiative was held on Thursday September 29 in Pomerene Hall. Faculty, staff, and students were invited to attend this half-day program celebrating scientific discoveries across food, nutrition, and diet at the Ohio State University. More than 70 attendees from 12 departments in 7 different colleges attended the event. Following flash talks by FFH core faculty and service providers on campus, FFH partnered with TDAI to facilitate research roundtable discussions.
After welcoming remarks from Dr. Cathann Kress, VP for Agriculture Administration and Dean of CFAES, FFH Faculty Director Devin Peterson presented on the impact of FFH at OSU since 2019 when he assumed his leadership role. Dr. Peterson emphasized the expanded research focus of Foods for Health, which stretches beyond the initial priority on metabolomics and personalized nutrition to now include crop & food improvement and food behaviors and perception. In addition, he shared updates on the FFH core faculty hiring plan, its growing affiliate community, and current FFH investments that support seed grants, research development activities, and FFH-initiated research proposals. “We’re grateful for this opportunity to meet today with everyone in person and share our successes and plans for the future” said Dr. Peterson.
The meeting also featured flash talks from six FFH core faculty and two program stakeholders from the Applied Microbiology Services Lab and TDAI. Presenters provided an overview of their research program or service and answered questions from the audience. “What a great opportunity to share some of the data management services we now offer,” says Dr. Alex Davis, the TDAI Data Scientist who joined the institute’s staff in May 2022. This segment also featured a video message from Dr. Darryl Wesener, a new FFH core faculty member specializing in human nutrition and the microbiome, who will join the OSU Department of Microbiology in January 2023.
A critical function of FFH is to build community on campus and support a network of faculty engaged in research aligned with its mission. In early January 2022, the FFH team launched a campus-wide survey, targeting faculty with relevant research programs, inviting them to join the affiliate program and share more about their current collaborators and needs. In turn, the annual meeting included a series of Research Roundtables designed to gain a better understanding of the progress, needs, and interest in topics areas including data analytics and AI in food & nutrition research, crop improvement for human health, metabolomics, and food choice and eating behavior. “I’m really pleased with the discussions held during the roundtables,” says FFH Senior Researcher Dr. Matt Teegarden. Matt leads scientific operations for FFH and oversees research programming and strategy for the initiative. “In fact, an important outcome from this segment is a plan to develop a metabolomics working group at OSU.”
Foods for Health affiliates and their trainees were also invited to participate in the FFH Annual Meeting Poster Competition, where three posters were selected as People’s Choice winners. Winning posters included Chemical drivers of vanilla liking (Paola Forero, PhD – Peterson Lab), Polyphenol-rich Nutrition Intervention Significantly Changed Gut Microbiome and Their Metabolic Landscape in a Human Colonic Mode (Shiqi Zhang – Zhu Lab), and Characterization of intestinal immune responses to coccidiosis in chicken (Shaimaa Hamad, PhD – Nazmi Lab). Overall, the competition featured 17 posters from 9 different faculty affiliate research programs. Foods for Health will leverage the high level of engagement with trainees into a new affiliate category designed to serve graduate students and post-doctoral scholars in the coming year.
“I’m really pleased with the event and think it provides us with a great platform to build from for next year’s annual meeting,” said Dr. Vicki Wysocki, FFH associate faculty director and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Look for a save the date for next year’s FFH annual meeting as well as opportunities to provide input on content and format later this year.
Interested in connecting with Foods for Health? Email ffh@osu.edu to learn more about the program
