Yimin Chen

Yimin Chen is an Associate Professor (Research) at the University of Idaho's Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2017), an M.S. from Rush University (2005), and a B.S. from Loyola University of Chicago (2001). Her research focuses on human milk immunomodulatory components' effects on infant immune responses, leveraging clinical and translational approaches. She leads the MIMI Lab and the Piglet Intervention Center (PInC™), using neonatal piglet models and human studies to explore maternal mental health, nutritional status, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. She advises multiple graduate and undergraduate students and collaborates on grants from NIH, ASPEN, and institutional funding.

Research interests include bioactive human milk peptides, early feeding exposures' neurodevelopmental impacts, and maternal stress reduction interventions. She speaks Mandarin Chinese and maintains a lab website (chenlabmimi.com) detailing ongoing projects and recruitment for studies.