Topic: Nutrition and brain health
Speaker: Distinguished Professor Gao Xiang, Dean of Institute of Nutrition, Fudan University (FDU)
Date and time: July 4, 10:00–11:30
Venue: Room 403, BME Building
Host: Zhang Han
Abstract:
Dr. Gao will share his 20 years of experience in studying nutrition and neurological diseases (e.g., dementia, Parkinson disease, and stroke) based on large-scale population-based cohorts, such as the Nurses’ Health Study, the Health Professional Follow-up Study and the Kailuan Study. He will systematically introduce how to collect data on neurological disorders in Chinese, American, and clinical population. He will also discuss the relationship between nutrition factors (including nutrients, foods/food groups, dietary patterns, and nicotine) and neurodegenerative disorders (such as Parkinson’s disease, and the prodromal symptoms of Parkinson's disease).
Biography:
Dr. Gao Xiang is a Distinguished Professor and the Dean of Institute of Nutrition, Fudan University. He is also the Chair of Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, Fudan University School of Public Health. Formerly, he was an Assistant Professor (2010-2014) at Harvard Medical School, and an Associate Professor (2014-2020) and Full Professor (2020-2022) at the Penn State University. He was also the Schreyer Distinguished Honors Faculty at the Penn State University. His research interests include nutritional epidemiology, neurological diseases, and global health. He has served as the PI of several NIH- funded R01/R21/R03 projects since 2009. He has published more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals and served on several national committees, such as UNESCO International Center for Creativity and Sustainable Development Advisory Committee, Institute of Medicine (IOM), and American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He serves as co-editor of Nutrition Journal. Dr. Gao won the Irwin H. Rosenberg Pre-doctoral Award from the Jean Mayor USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts (2006), the Wayne A. Hening Sleep Medicine Investigator Award from the American Academy of Neurology (2011), the Leadership/Expertise Alumni Award from the Tufts Nutrition School (2012), the Samuel Fomon Young Physician Investigator Award from American Society for Nutrition (2015), and the Pattishall Outstanding Research Achievement Award (2020) from the Penn State University. He was selected into the Tufts Honorable Alumni Registry in 2015. Dr. Gao graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (MD), Peking Union Medical College & Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (MS in Epidemiology) and Tufts University (PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology).