Jennifer Temple

Jennifer L. Temple is a Professor at the University at Buffalo, holding dual appointments in the Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences and the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior within the School of Public Health and Health Professions. She directs the Nutrition and Health Research Laboratory and serves as Graduate Program Director. Her research focuses on ingestive behavior, particularly how factors like caffeine use, nutrition, and environmental influences shape eating patterns and obesity development across the lifespan.

Temple holds a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Virginia (2002) and a BS in Psychology from Florida State University (1998, Magna cum laude). She is affiliated with professional organizations including the Obesity Society and Society for Neuroscience.

Her research emphasizes caffeine's effects on adolescents, interactions between exercise and nutrition, and individual differences predicting weight gain. Current funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse supports studies on caffeine's impact on youth physiology and behavior. Her work also explores food reinforcement mechanisms, food insecurity, and policy-related interventions.

Key findings include links between food reinforcement sensitization and BMI changes in adolescents, relationships between parental feeding practices and child obesity risk, and the role of socioeconomic factors in health behaviors. She has published extensively on topics ranging from energy drink effects to behavioral economic models of food choice.

Temple's lab supports student training in all research aspects and collaborates on translational projects addressing real-world public health challenges. Her work bridges basic science and applied interventions to combat obesity and promote healthy behaviors.