Steven Zeisel, MD, PhD

---

Steven Zeisel, MD, PhD is the Director of the University of North Carolina's Nutrition Research Institute, a world-renowned scientist and a Kenan Distinguished University Professor in Nutrition and Pediatrics. Dr. Zeisel is internationally recognized for his research in nutrigenetics and nutrient requirements. Dr. Zeisel is the Kenan Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Nutrition in the Gillings School of Global Public Health and School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Zeisel earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1975, was a resident in pediatrics at Yale University from 1975–1977, and earned his PhD in nutrition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. He served as chair of the Department of Nutrition at UNC from 1990-2005. Dr. Zeisel is the Director of the UNC Nutrition Research Institute and Director of the UNC Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (one of 12 centers of excellence funded by the US National Institutes of Health). Dr. Zeisel serves on the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal editorial board. His research team focuses on the essential nutrient choline and why there are individual differences in nutrient metabolism, using new approaches in nutrigenetics and metabolomics. Dr. Zeisel has proven that humans require choline and that this nutrient is critical for normal brain development, and for liver and muscle function. Based on his research, the US Institute of Medicine set a dietary requirement for choline in 1998. Currently, Zeisel’s team is investigating how gene misspellings alter dietary requirements, how diet can add marks to genes which turn them on an off (epigenetics), and how choline is needed for normal liver, muscle and sperm function. All of these studies have been supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health. Dr. Zeisel has authored more than 350 scientific publications and has won numerous awards including the prestigious National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Falk Award, the American Society for Nutrition’s Osborne and Mendel Award, the American College of Nutrition’s Award.