A person’s health and wellness can fluctuate based on the nutrition and other dietary intakes. A primary goal of the field of precision nutritional science is to optimize individuals’ response to different dietary choices through tailored plan, therefore preventing diseases or bending the curves of disease progression. At UAB, we’re taking a data-driven multi-omics modeling approach to the precision nutrition challenge by doing:
- systematically collect genome, proteome, human gut microbiome, metabolome, clinome, and dietome data;
- correlate intra-omics and inter-omics measurements to derive statistically significant signals as “biomarkers”;
- study how dietary/clinical factors affects the changes of multi-omics signature biomarkers over time;
- develop and apply algorithms and AI techniques to the tailoring of dietary plans to individuals with pre-collected multi-omic biomarker profiles.
Leadership

Jake Chen, Ph.D.
Chief Bioinformatics Officer
Professor
Department of Genetics
UAB

Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, Ph.D.
Professor
Webb Endowed Chair
Department of Nutrition Sciences
UAB

Merry-Lynn McDonald, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Medicine
UAB

Matt Might, Ph.D.
Director
Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute
Professor
Department of Medicine
UAB

Liz Worthey, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Pediatrics
UAB

Ralph Zottola
Assistant Vice President
Research Computing
UAB