Leann Birch, PhD (Core Leader): Department of Human Development and Family Studies, College of Health and Human Development
Dr. Birch is a psychologist and Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies. Her current NIH-funded project focuses on issues related to women's health, especially on the development of eating behavior and problems of energy balance during childhood and adolescence. “Early Dieting in Girls” is a prospective study of the individual and family factors involved in the emergence of dieting, obesity, weight concerns, and disordered eating among girls ages 5 to 15 years.

Robert Gabbay, MD, PhD Department of Medicine, College of Medicine
Dr. Gabbay is an endocrinologist, Professor of Medicine, Director of The Penn State Hershey Diabetes Institute, and director of the Diabetes Program.  His primary research interest is improving diabetes care for those who are not attaining appropriate goals.   His current funded research from the NIH is the DYNAMIC Study (Diabetes Nurse Case Management and Motivational Interviewing for Change) -  a randomized controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of nurse case managers trained in motivational interviewing, basic diabetes self-management education, and clinical guidelines to improve diabetes co-morbidities.  This study includes approximately 1000 patients (half of which will be women) in nine primary care clinics including three underserved Hispanic clinical centers.  BIRCWH scholars will have an opportunity to evaluate gender-based differences in outcomes.  Dr. Gabbay also leads the effort of the Penn State Diabetes Center Registry—a web-based, secure registry that contains clinical information on over 10,000 patients with diabetes in Central Pennsylvania.  This clinical tool also serves as a potent recruitment tool for clinical trials.  Collaborations with Reading Hospital with a primarily Hispanic population provide an opportunity for evaluation of health disparities in the Hispanic population.  Opportunities exist to evaluate gender differences in care within the large diabetes population in Central Pennsylvania and also to collaborate with numerous other investigators within the institution on diabetes-related projects.

Marianne Hillemeier, PhD Department of Health Policy and Administration, College of Medicine
Dr. Hillemeier is a sociologist, and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Administration and Demography with joint appointments in the Departments of Public Health Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology.  Her research focuses on disparities in health.  She served as co-PI of the CePAWHS project that focuses on women's preconceptional and interconceptional health in relation to overall health status and pregnancy outcomes and provides a unique population-based data set of 2,600 women of reproductive age in Central Pennsylvania.  She is interested in disparities in women's access to and use of reproductive health-related services along the rural-urban continuum and the influence of community-level and individual-level variables on indicators of women's reproductive health.

Ian Paul, MD Department of General Pediatrics
Ian Paul, MD, MSc is a Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health Sciences. His primary research interest is improving maternal-child health through preventive postpartum-postnatal interventions. His major current focus is the primary prevention of obesity with other lines of research that include improving healthcare delivery and breastfeeding and prevention of shaken baby syndrome. He also continues to conduct clinical trials related to pediatric therapeutics in areas which include asthma and the treatment of cough and cold symptoms in children.

Barbara J. Rolls, PhD Director, Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior
Helen A. Guthrie Chair in Nutrition; Professor of Nutritional Sciences; Professor of Biobehavioral Health; Faculty member in the Intercollege Graduate Program in Physiology; Faculty member in the Integrative Biosciences Graduate Program; Professor of Neural and Behavioral Sciences, College of Medicine. Dr. Rolls principal research interest is dietary influences on energy intake, hunger, and satiety and weight management. Her research is funded primarily by NIDDK. In her MERIT award she has studied how the macronutrient composition and energy density (kcal/gram) of foods affects satiety. In a year-long clinical trial in obese women, she found that advising them to reduce the energy density of the diet by lowering fat intake and by increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables was associated with significant weight loss, reduced hunger and improved diet quality. The research funded by her other NIDDK grant has shown that large portions of energy-dense foods increase energy intake over periods of up to 11 days. In her studies, she compares responses of women and men to determine whether there are sex differences in eating behavior. These findings suggest nutritionally sound dietary strategies for weight management.

Richard S. Legro, MD (Core Leader): Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine
Dr. Legro is an obstetrician-gynecologist with subspecialist training in reproductive endocrinology and the director of the Meharry-Penn State U54 Reproductive Center, described earlier.  His clinical research focuses primarily on polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), the most common endocrinopathy in women (about 5-10% are affected), which consists of unexplained chronic anovulation and androgen excess.  Most women also have metabolic abnormalities including insulin resistance and dyslipidemia.  He is interested in understanding the pathophysiology of PCOS, the genetic underpinnings, and above all validating clinical interventions to improve outcomes.  His research is looking at the effects of various treatments, including lifestyle and pharmaceutical, that improve insulin sensitivity on the PCOS phenotype, as well as other insulin resistant groups.  These trials range from small pilot studies to large multi-center trials. He is the lead investigator of the recently completed Pregnancy in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PPCOS) recently completed by the U10 Reproductive Medicine Network, which examined the efficacy of clomiphene citrate and metformin on live birth. Several family studies are now investigating the heritability of abnormalities in sisters and brothers of women with PCOS as well as their children. He also is interested in the reproductive and metabolic changes induced by oral contraception in this group and the treatment of dysmenorrhea.

Douglas Leslie, PhD Department of Public Health Sciences, College of Medicine
Douglas L. Leslie, PhD is a Professor of Public Health Sciences and Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine. He is an economist whose research focuses on health economics, health services research, and mental health. He is also the Director of the Penn State Center for Applied Studies in Health Economics. His research interests span multiple areas, including access to care, quality of care, the effects of health care financing on service use and costs, and pharmacoeconomics. He has considerable experience with large databases, including those from the Department of Veteran Affairs, state Medicaid programs and private health insurers.

Carol S. Weisman, PhD Departments of Public Health Sciences, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Health Policy & Administration, College of Medicine
Dr. Weisman is Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Distinguished Professor of Public Health Sciences, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Health Policy and Administration in the Penn State College of Medicine.   She is Principal Investigator of the Penn State BIRCWH Program.  A sociologist and health services researcher, Dr. Weisman's research focuses on women's health care, especially access to primary and preventive services, organizational models for primary care delivery, and quality of health care for women.  Her major current project, the Central Pennsylvania Women's Health Study (CePAWHS), focuses on understanding the determinants of the health of reproductive-age women, particularly in low-income rural and urban communities, and the relationship between preconceptional health and pregnancy outcomes for the mother and baby. She is also co-directing a project assessing barriers to primary care for rural women and is co-leader of the Community Engagement core for the Penn State CTSI.  Dr. Weisman was Chair (2007) of the Board of Directors of AcademyHealth, and is Associate Editor (Editor-in-Chief, 2003-2006) of the peer-reviewed journal Women's Health Issues.  She was the recipient of the Leader in the Field Award from the Family Health Council of Central Pennsylvania in 2008 and served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Preventive Services for Women (2010-2011).  Dr. Weisman is the author of over 140 publications, including Women's Health Care: Activist Traditions and Institutional Change (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

Nancy I. Williams, ScD Department of Kinesiology, College of Health and Human Development; Intercollege Program in Physiology
The focus of Dr. Williams’ work in the Exercise Endocrinology and Metabolism Laboratory is the study of the modulation of reproductive function via alterations in energy balance.  The overall goal is to increase understanding of the mechanisms whereby the metabolic status of the body is communicated to the centers that control the reproductive axis during conditions of chronic energy deficiency and/or energy surplus.  A secondary goal is to improve our ability to predict an individual’s risk of experiencing alterations in levels of circulating reproductive hormones, primarily circulating estrogens, by assessing the contributions of other factors that influence one’s susceptibility to disturbances in reproductive function, including gynecological maturity, perception of stress, and inherent endocrine robustness.  The clinical applications of this work relate to infertility, bone health, reproductive cancers, and physical performance.  Recently, two randomized clinical trials examining the impact of increased exercise combined with caloric restriction on reproductive function and circulating biomarkers for breast cancer in premenopausal women have been completed.  Scholars would gain an understanding of the physiological mechanisms underlying the relationship between energy balance and reproductive function and training in methodological techniques and experimental strategies to assess reproductive function and quantify and manipulate energy balance.

Sheri Berenbaum, PhD (Core Leader):  Departments of Psychology and Pediatrics, College of Liberal Arts
Dr. Berenbaum is a psychologist who studies neuroendocrine influences on development.  She is interested in the effects of hormones at multiple sensitive periods (prenatal, puberty, pregnancy) on normal variations in human social behavior and cognition.  She is particularly interested in the development of gender-related behavior, including gender identity, sex-related personality and social behaviors (e.g., toy play, activity interests, emotional response, aggression), and sex-related cognitive abilities (e.g., spatial ability, verbal memory).  Her current studies are focused on understanding more about the nature and mechanisms (neural and psychological) of hormonal influences on behavior, and the ways in which these effects are modified by the social environment.  Her work is also relevant to current controversies in pediatric medicine regarding management of children with disorders of sex development.

Laura Carrel, PhD Department of Biochenistry and Molecular Biology
Dr. Carrel is Associate Professor of Biochenistry and Molecular Biology in the College of Medicine.  Trained in genetics, Dr. Carrel's research focuses on chromosome structure and fucntion; genome organization; long-range control of gene expression; heterochromatin formation; epigenetic role in human disease; and genetics and genomics of X chromosome inactivation in human and mouse.  The current BIRCWH Scholars requested a seminar presentation by Dr. Carrel, who is interested in working with future BIRCWH Scholars.

William Gerin, PhD Department of Biobehavioral Health
Dr. Gerin is a Professor of Biobehavioral Health and Director of Mind-Bosy Cardiovascular Psychophysiology Laboratory in the College of Health and Human Development.  His research focuses on the role of the social stressors and angry rumination in biological dysregulation and development of heart disease and on non-pharmacological interventions to reduce blood pressure in hypertensive patients.  He has developed and tested an intervention to teach patients about high blood pressure using Self-Paced Programmed Instruction.  BIRCWH Scholars have consulted him regarding gender differences in development and prevention of high blood pressure.

Susan McHale, PhD Department of Human Development and Family Studies, College of Health and Human Development
Dr. McHale’s research focuses on children's and adolescents' family relationships, roles and everyday activities and the extent to which these are gendered.  Highlighted in her work are sibling relationship dynamics and the family experiences that foster similarities and differences in the interests, attributes and developmental trajectories of sisters and brothers.  Her early research on children’s and adolescents’ family experiences pointed to the significance of gender dynamics in everyday family life and served as a basis for her interest in the family as a context for gender socialization.  The extent to which sisters versus brothers assume different family roles, experience different kinds of relationships with their parents, and have access to different kinds of resources and opportunities are important ways in which families differ.  She studies the ways in which such family dynamics are linked to  girls’ and boys’ well-being and development.  A body of research has uncovered sex differences in a range of adjustment problems in childhood and adolescence, with problems such as depression and weight concerns more common in girls and risky behaviors and conduct problems more common in boys.  Findings such as these suggest that the study of gender socialization in the family may be central to an understanding of child and adolescent mental health and adjustment.

Lawrence I. Sinoway, MD Department of Medicine (Cardiology), College of Medicine
Dr. Sinoway is a cardiologist with a principal interest in neural control of circulation.  His specific area of interest is the neurocirculatory regulation during exercise in normal subjects and in those with pathophysiologic conditions.  He is currently principal investigator of two NIH funded studies, one of which is investigating muscle reflex control of the circulationand the second is to study interstitial norepinephrine and exercise.  Dr. Sinoway is also program director and a project leader of a Program Project Grant (PPG) to study autonomic neurovascular regulation.  Dr. Sinoway’s ongoing studies would provide a PSU-BIRCWH scholar with an exciting opportunity to investigate gender differences in muscle reflex response to exercise and vascular control, or to investigate the effects of factors specific to women, such as variation in hormones across the menstrual cycle, on vascular control, muscle reflex response or neurocirculatory regulation.  In addition, as one of Penn State’s leading cardiologists and program director of the Penn State GCRC, Dr. Sinoway will mentor scholars interested in more global issues related to cardiovascular health including the study of sex differences in age of onset, symptom pattern at onset and risk factors for cardiovascular disease or gender differences in quality of care received as treatment for cardiovascular disease.

Neil Christensen, PhD Department of Pathology, College of Medicine
Dr. Christensen is an immunologist whose research focuses on the papillomavirus. The overall research theme in Dr.Christensen’s laboratory is studies on immunity and pathogenesis of papillomavirus infections. Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection causes hyperproliferative lesions in cutaneous and mucosal epithelium. A proportion of these HPV infections have been shown to progress to malignancies of the uterine cervix. The major subprojects include: 1) characterization of viral capsid neutralizing epitopes; 2) vaccine development; 3) analysis of T-cell recognition of viral epitopes on virus-infected papilloma cells; 4) papillomavirus animal model systems; 5) model systems to test for anti-viral compounds, and 6) methods to propagate human papillomaviruses. Current goals are to test both protective and prophylactic vaccines using animal models of papillomavirus infections. Current studies include identification of host receptor molecules involved in papillomavirus uptake and internalization, and the development of a transgenic animal model to study the role of HLA Class I in papillomavirus immunity.

Roger Anderson, PhD Department of Public Health Science, College of Medicine
Dr. Anderson is a behavioral scientist and health services researcher.  His research focuses on evaluating health care for major health conditions toward improving access to comprehensive health care services, patient support and care coordination for leading health conditions such as diabetes, cancer, and stroke.  He has conducted studies involving the development and use of health-related quality of life measures, patient satisfaction, barriers to cancer care among low-income insured women with breast cancer, and socio-economic disparities in health outcomes.  His major current projects include a study of individual and contextual determinants of 7-state study of breast and prostate cancer care outcomes, and a study of breast and colorectal cancer in rural Appalachia.  He is Principal Investigator of a Susan G. Komen Foundation training grant on Breast Cancer Disparities in Rural Appalachia.

Eugene Lengerich, VMD, MS Department of Public Health Sciences, College of Medicine

Dr. Lengerich, VMD, MS, is a Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Pennsylvania State University's College of Medicine and Director of the Community Science and Health Outcomes Core of the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute.  Dr. Lengerich is an epidemiologist with expertise in community-based participatory research, evidence-based practice, and health disparities.  His research has targeted colorectal, female breast, cervical and prostate cancers.  Since 2004, Dr. Lengerich has been the principal investigator of the Northern Appalachia Cancer Network (NACN), a community/academic partnership to reduce the burden of cancer in Appalachian Pennsylvania and New York.  Established in 1992, the NACN has been continuously funded by the National Cancer Institute.  In 2009, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities recognized the engaged scholarship of NACN, which inlcudes over 30 manuscripts in the peer-reviewed literature.  Recently, Dr. Lengerich has been involved with efforts to develop cancer patient navigation in Appalachia and community health workers in the minority community of Harrisburg.  In addition, he has used public health informatics, including Geographic Information Systems and digital atlases, to quantify patterns in cancer incidence and mortality.  Dr. Lengerich is Director of the Appalachia Cancer Scholars Program, funded by the National Cancer Institute, which trains post-doctorate scholars in community-based research in cancer prevention and control in Appalachia.

Prior to joining the faculty of Penn State in 1998, Dr. Lengerich was the State Chronic Disease Epidemiologist for North Carolina.  Dr. Lengerich received epidemiologic training via the Epidemic Intelligence Service program and the Preventive Medicine Residency at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.  Dr. Lengerich enjoys teaching epidemiology and mentoring pre- and post-doctorate scholars.

Craig Meyers, PhD Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine
Dr. Meyers is a Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Immunology.  The central research goals of his laboratory are to study the differentiation-dependent life cycle of human papillomavirus (HPV) and HPV-associated oncogenesis. His studies follow six general research themes: (1) Investigation of the molecular biology and genetics of HPV morphogenesis and structure in native virus replicated under natural physiological differentiation conditions of the host tissue. The majority of the laboratories studying HPV morphogenesis and structure utilize synthetic particles such as virus-like particles (VLPs) or pseudoviral particles (PsV). Our studies have shown that the morphogenesis, maturation, and structure of native HPV differs in many significant characteristic from VLPs or PsV particles. (2) Investigation of the efficacy of disinfectants and microbicides on native HPV as compared to VLPs/PsV. Our results demonstrate that HPV is significantly more resistant to disinfectants and microbicides then our VLPs/PsV. This demonstrates the clinical importance of using native HPV for disinfectant and microbicide testing. (3) Determining the mechanism whereby cofactors such as tobacco carcinogens increase carcinogenic progression in HPV-associated cancers. We are dissecting the signaling pathways and cell cycle components that are impacted by the interaction of cofactors and HPV in host tissue. (4) Determining the interaction of highly active anti-retroviral drugs on oral tissues, HPV and HPV’s infection of oral tissue. (5) Development of population science and basic science interactions to monitor, understand and influence education and behavior as they relate to a risk for acquiring an HPV-associated infection. (6) Comparative analysis of HPV infection, life cycle, and oncogenesis at different anatomical sites. (7) Investigation of AAV2 oncolytic properties. Including determine the mechanisms induced by AAV2 causing cancer cells to undergo cell death and translating these findings to the clinic.

Andrew Read, PhD www.thereadgroup.net Departments of Biology and Entomology, Eberly College of Science and College of Agricultural Science
Dr. Read is an evolutionary biologist and Director of Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics www.cidd.psu.edu.  He has worked on various aspects of the evolution of infectious disease agents for more than twenty years.  Current interests are focused on understanding  the 'natural' selection imposed by medical and public health practices, and finding ways to ameliorate the evolution that drives in disease-causing organisms.  This involves problems in vaccine-driven pathogen evolution, drug resistance and the evolution of insecticide resistant insects that vector diseases.  Most work in his group currently concerns the three players in malaria - the parasites, the mosquitoes and the vertebrate host - and is investigating whether malaria vaccines would lead to the evolution of more virulent parasites, and the effect of contrasting patient treatment regimens on the evolution of drug resistance.  Other work involves the search for evolution-proof insecticides against mosquitoes that transmit malaria, and whether vaccination was responsible for the dramatic increases in virulence in Marek's disease, a viral pathogen on poultry.