PhD
Assistant Professor, Exercise and Sport Science
UNC-Chapel Hill
Cancer Prevention and Control
Area of Interest
I am interested in how people’s engagement in the lifestyle behaviors of physical activity and alcohol use jointly impact their cancer risk. This focus on physical activity and alcohol use is because research indicates a positive association between these two behaviors, despite their having opposing effects on cancer disease risk factors. As such, I think it is important to understand the combined rather than the independent effects of these lifestyle behaviors on cancer risk.
I am specifically focused on investigating how the features of daily physical activity and alcohol use behaviors, such as intensity and duration of behavioral engagement, impact the biological mechanisms underlying cancer risk factors via their effects on obesity and inflammation. I aim to understand the within-person, daily dynamics of lifestyles behaviors in real-time and in individuals’ natural environments before the onset of disease. As such, my research primarily focuses on overtly healthy adults aged ~21-64 years of age.
Unlike many alcohol researchers, I do not focus on college student populations or college student drinking behaviors because they are fleeting and do not reflect people’s typical lifelong drinking behaviors. Similarly, I focus on this age range of adults because these are the ages across which the effects of lifestyle behaviors start to accumulate to either increase or decrease disease risk factors and incident disease.
This work fits well within the cancer community’s focus on lifestyle behaviors and cancer prevention and I am interested in contributing to scientific knowledge and public health recommendations to reduce disease risk and improve overall health outcomes.
Awards and Honors
- Early Career Preventionists Network Travel Award, Society for Prevention Research, 2023
- Prevention Science Early Career Reviewer Program, Prevention Science, 2022-present
- First Place in Short-Talk Competition, 14th Annual Postdoc Research Exhibition, The Pennsylvania State University, 2021
- Early Career Preventionists Network Travel Award, Society for Prevention Research, 2021
- Dulcinea del Toboso Travel Award, Department of Health and Exercise Science, Colorado State University, 2020
- Travel Scholarship, Mathematical Sciences in Obesity Research Short Course, Indiana University School of Public Health, 2019
- HES Doctoral Dissertation Enhancement Award, Department of Health and Exercise Science, Colorado State University, 2019
- Student/Trainee Award Winner, Evidence-Based Behavioral Medicine Special Interest Group, Society of Behavioral Medicine, 2019
- President’s Cup Winner, Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine, 2019
- Vice President for Research Fellow, Office of the VPR Colorado State University, 2018-2019
- Robert W. Gotshall Graduate Scholarship, Colorado State University, 2018-2019
- Bariatric Center of the Rockies Graduate Scholarship, Colorado State University, 2018-2019
- President’s Cup Winner, Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine, 2018
- College of Health and Human Sciences Excellence in Research and Scholarship, Colorado State University, 2017
- Margaret and Donald Boyd Graduate Student Scholarship, Colorado State University, 2017-2018
