Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Stern completed her doctoral degree in Nutritional Biology at the University of California, Davis where she studied the energetic impact of aging and calorie restriction in a mouse model. Utilizing indirect respiration calorimetry, her research focused on understanding the regulation of energy expenditure, substrate utilization, and food intake in the context of aging, obesity, and gene expression. Dr. Stern earned her Bachelor of Science in Communication Studies from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and her Masters of Science in Human Nutrition from Arizona State University. She initially became interested in the link between nutrition and age-related diseases while serving as a hospice counselor. This experience has directed her research focus to understand the energetic mechanisms involved in the development and progression of age-related pathophysiologies, particularly obesity and cancer. While it has been demonstrated that obesity is linked to cancer risk through mechanisms involving the inflammatory and hormonal milieu of the obese state, short sleep duration and poor sleep quality are associated with weight gain and resultant obesity, which has been demonstrated to lead to poor prognosis in cancer patients. As an R25 fellow, Dr. Stern’s research aims to identify and elucidate mechanisms by which sleep habits may mediate cancer progression associated with the metabolic dysregulation caused by obesity.
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