Brian Feldman, MD, PhD
Walter L. Miller Distinguished Professor
University of California, San Francisco
Department of Pediatrics
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology
I have focused my clinical research in the field of type 2 diabetes and obesity and have developed a three-pronged research program that is unified under this theme. The first arm consists of using existing cohort studies to test novel biomarkers that predict diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The second arm is to create a South Asian cohort to study these risk factors in a very high risk group. The final arm is to test behavioral interventions to prevent the onset of diabetes.
Galateia J. Kazakia, PhD, is Professor in Residence and Director of the Bone Quality Research Laboratory in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Kazakia serves as the Faculty Director of the Quantitative Musculoskeletal-Imaging Core, Director of the UCSF Core Center for Musculoskeletal Biology and Medicine (CCMBM) Imaging Core, and Co-Director of the Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (NORC) Human Metabolism Core. Dr. Kazakia received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1995.
Jeremy Reiter is the chairperson of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. His lab investigates how cilia form, signal and function in intercellular communication. Their achievements include:
1. The discovery that Smoothened, a critical component of the Hedgehog pathway, localizes to and works in cilia. This was the first demonstration that the Hedgehog signal transduction machinery functions at cilia.
2. They were the first to show that cancers can be ciliated and that cancers can require cilia for growth.
Research in Allison Xu’s laboratory focuses on understanding the adaptive regulation of energy balance and glucose homeostasis in response to changes of physiologic and environmental conditions. Specifically, Allison’s lab is investigating how hypothalamic and hindbrain neurons sense and integrate peripheral hormones and nutritional signals, and how these neurons regulate feeding, energy expenditure, systemic glucose and lipid metabolism.
