Karen Peterson

My research focuses on the influence of interactions of diet and toxicants, e.g., metals and endocrine-disrupting chemicals on physical growth, maturation and cardiometabolic risk across life course in human cohort studies. I also have extensive experience in the design, implementation and evaluation of RCTs of nutrition interventions to reduce obesity and comorbidities. As Associate Director of the NIH-funded Michigan Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (MNORC), I oversee the Nutrition Assessment Lab (NAL) and have substantial expertise in the validation of self-report measures of diet and physical activity, relative to unbiased criterion measures, and methods to quantify reporting bias. My research incorporates data science approaches for high-dimensional outcomes and mediators of toxicant effects on cardiometabolic outcomes, including accelerometry-based measures of physical activity, epigenetics and biological aging, and targeted and untargeted metabolomics.