Faculty/Staff Spotlight
When asked what first attracted him to Ohio University, Dhiraj Vattem, new director of the School of Applied Health Sciences and Wellness, answered without hesitation: “The culture of the university. It puts a great deal of emphasis on innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration, working with industry, and reaching out to the community.”
But the newly hired professor and biomedical researcher quickly added, “The school is actually what drew me here. It has all three divisions [athletic training, exercise physiology and food and nutrition sciences] under one roof. I found that very compatible with my own interests. We have excellent hardworking faculty here, and I see a tremendous potential for the school to develop into a center of excellence committed to innovative education, multidisciplinary research and global engagement.”
Vattem’s previous research at Texas State University near Austin, where he served as the principal investigator and director of the Nutritional Biomedicine and Biotechnology Laboratory, focused on understanding and enhancing the biological functionality of dietary ingredients, micronutrients, dietary supplements and probiotics.
Specifically, his research has explored the biological functionality of dietary bioactive compounds for therapeutic modulation of stress response signaling pathways important in several age-related pathologies, including neurodegeneration and cognitive decline. His other research interests are in cell density mediated bacterial quorum signaling modulation by plant secondary metabolites to reduce bacterial virulence and pathogenicity. His research has resulted in commercialization of two products and contributed to the development of a new technology for pathogen detection in dietary and non-dietary matrices.
So he was particularly impressed that Ohio University has the infrastructure and processes already in place to support research innovation, development and commercialization. In his newly established labs in the Edison Biotechnology Institute at the Konneker Research Center, Vattem hopes to continue his research program and explore collaborative research opportunities with other colleges and departments on such topics as obesity, diabetes, aging and other stress-related or degenerative diseases.
Between teaching and research, Vattem hopes to find time to pursue another interest: star gazing. “I’m a bit of an amateur astronomer,” he said. “I have a few telescopes, and Athens has so little light pollution compared to where I was in Austin that I can’t wait to use them!” He could barely contain his excitement when he recently learned that a new observatory was being built at the Ridges, just a short walk from his lab.