Saroja Voruganti

Dr. Saroja Voruganti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health. She leads a research program in nutritional genomics, focusing on gene-nutrient interactions, metabolic diseases, and health disparities in minority populations such as American Indian, Hispanic, and Parsi Zoroastrian communities. Her work bridges genetics, nutrition, and epidemiology to improve disease risk assessment and treatment options.

Education: PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin (2005), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Genetic Epidemiology at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (2009).

Research Interests: Diabetes, heart disease, obesity, neurological disorders, and precision nutrition. She investigates how genetic and environmental factors influence disease risk in diverse populations and explores metabolic pathways like purine metabolism.

Professional Contributions: Co-Director of the Precision Nutrition Core at UNC's Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC), Associate Editor of Frontiers in Genetics and Frontiers in Nutrition, and Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA).

Teaching: Offers graduate courses including "Nutrigenetics and Nutrigenomics" and "Introduction to Nutritional Epidemiology," plus an annual workshop on genetic data analysis.

Awards: Recognized for her contributions with the FAHA designation (2014).