Elizabeth J. Parks, PhD
I am a tenured Associate Professor of Clinical Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX. I received a B.S. in Exercise Physiology at the University of Wisconsin and then became a research assistant, working in laboratories of Drs. Russell Ross and B. Greg Brown in the field of atherosclerosis research, at the University of Washington in Seattle. I completed doctoral studies under the direction of Barbara Schneeman at UC-Davis, an expert in postprandial lipid metabolism and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Marc Hellerstein at UC-Berkeley, in the use of stable isotopes to investigate in vivo metabolism. Over the past 13 years, the influences of these two thought-leaders in nutrition resulted in my development of new techniques to study the metabolism of food in obesity and insulin resistance. Our lab was the first to demonstrate the significant contribution of the diet to the development of obesity-related, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) through both dietary fat and carbohydrate. Professionally, I have held multiple leadership positions in the American Society for Nutrition - recently serving as chair of the writing group for the Obesity Platform (statement of ASN research goals) and advising the new Early Career Group as they became established. Nationally, I have been a standing member of the NIH review committee (Clinical and Integrative Diabetes and Obesity), have served on numerous special emphasis committees, and this fall, I will co-chair an NIH symposium on the health impacts of dietary fructose.
I have been a member of TOS for 13 yrs and a fellow since 2007. I am currently on the Scientific Program Committee (Track 1 chair) and have been highly active in mentoring activities for graduate students, fellows and junior faculty.
