Message from the Chair

Welcome!

The Department of Health Sciences at Boston University is committed to excellence in research and teaching. We provide the solid training that leads to a competitive edge in careers in health professions and biomedical research. The department is located in the Sargent College on the Charles River Campus of Boston University and offers programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels in: physiology & neurobiology, nutrition and health science.  I encourage you to peruse the details of these programs on the individual program web pages.

Our programs and faculty are growing, This year a new full time nutrition faculty member, Michele DeBiasse, will be joining us from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and Tufts University with extensive clinical experience in Medical Nutrition Therapy.  Also, 2 new Adjunct Professors have joined the AAP graduate program: Paul Leavis, from Tufts University and the Boston Biomedical Research Institute and, Lisa Leon from the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. Dr. Leavis studies the peptide hormone leptin, as it relates to cancer and reproductive disorders and the development of peptide drugs as anticancer agents. Dr. Leon’s research focuses on cytokines in thermoregulatory, metabolic and tissue injury responses to environmental stressors. They will be helping us expand the mentoring of graduate students as well as departmental teaching. Additionally, this fall we will be initiating an international search for a tenure-track faculty position in the area of Computational Neurobiology & Physiology.

Our faculty have interdisciplinary interests. Research areas in the department include cellular and molecular physiology, cytoskeletal biology, protein-protein interactions, apoptosis, cognition and neural information processing, the psychosocial and genetic bases of perinatal disorders and their public health implications, mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and preterm labor as well as obesity and cardiovascular disease research. The department holds almost $5 million/year in research funding and 3 of our faculty members are currently serving on NIH peer review committees.

The department includes 73 full and part-time faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and technical and administrative staff. The size of the department facilitates individualized mentorship and research collaborations.  Many of our faculty hold joint appointments in departments on the medical campus.  We have an active and involved group of adjunct faculty and affiliated clinicians who co-mentor our graduate students and provide practicum training.  In addition, our highly regarded Nutrition clinical training program operates out of the Health Sciences Department in partnership with area hospitals.

For further information beyond that contained in these web pages you are welcome to contact myself or the appropriate Program Director: Dr. Robbie Durschlag (rdurschl@bu.edu, nutrition programs), Dr. Eileen O’Keefe (ebokeefe@bu.edu, Health Science program), or Dr. Judy Schotland (schotlnd@bu.edu, physiology & neurobiology programs).

 

Kathleen G. Morgan
Chair, Department of Health Sciences