Research seminar: April 29, 2022

 

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Center for Healthy Aging Research – Opportunities and new directions

canceled

We will reschedule the presentation for Fall 2022.


Karen Hooker, PhD
Jo Anne Leonard Petersen Endowed Chair in Gerontology and Family Studies; Interim Co-Director, Center for Healthy Aging Research, College of Public Health and Human Sciences

Karen's research interests are on self and personality processes in understanding relationships between mental and physical health, coping, social support and health behaviors. Past work has examined spouse caregivers for people with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Examination of change and stability in psychological processes using an intraindividual variability approach is also a recurrent research theme.

 

Emily Ho, PhD
Interim Co-Director, Center for Healthy Aging Research, College of Public Health and Human Sciences; Director, Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University

Emily's research interests are in the area of antioxidants and gene expression and dietary chemoprevention strategies. She is currently interested in understanding the role of the antioxidant nutrients such as zinc in maintaining DNA integrity and cancer development. Specifically, she is concerned with the effects of zinc status on DNA damage, DNA repair and stress-response signal pathways. She is also becoming interested in the effects of zinc on the immune system, especially as people age. A large proportion of population does not eat enough zinc, especially the elderly, and hence may be at increased risk for cancer and other disorders. Another major focus in the lab is dietary approaches for prostate cancer prevention. She is investigating the molecular mechanisms by which foods like soy, tea and cruciferous vegetables may protect against prostate cancer.

 

Jackilen Shannon, PhD
OHSU Knight Cancer Institute/Oregon Clinical Translational Research Institute

Jackilen is a population scientist. As such, her work begins with consideration of the distribution and determinants of disease at the population level. Over the years her diverse training in Nutrition Science (BS), Public Health (MPH), Nutritional Epidemiology (PhD) and Cancer Epidemiology (post-doc) has allowed her to explore many levels of analysis, including the individual- level (dietary intake ) and the micro-level (molecular markers, genetic polymorphisms), but always with an intent of population level application.  Additionally, as a result of her training from basic science into public health and population science, she found that translational research was a very comfortable fit for her work.