John Haley receives NIH Fellowship for Liver Metabolism Research

John Haley, a PhD student in our lab, was awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). The four-year fellowship will enable him to investigate the impact of signaling and metabolic pathways on a nutrient-sensing complex in the liver.

“I’m very excited to receive this NIH award,” Haley said. “This is similar to what we do currently in the lab, but we’re pivoting to focus more on the liver in this project as opposed to the other tissues that we study.” Haley will receive $33,000 a year for the next four years.

The purpose of this Kirschstein-NRSA program is to enable promising predoctoral students with potential to develop into productive, independent research scientists, while obtaining mentored research training through dissertation research.

“This award will allow me to put more emphasis on studying the liver as opposed to where this lab is mainly funded now, which is investigating brown fat,” he said.

Haley, who holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Stony Brook University, became interested in metabolic research to gain a deeper understanding of how diseases like obesity affect humans.

“Obesity is an important global health concern, and there are a lot of complications associated with it, such as type 2 diabetes and liver disease,” Haley said. “If we can better understand the metabolic consequences that take place during obesity, we’ll be able to come up with better therapeutic strategies to treat people with these diseases.”