Obesity Research Institute

Join us for our next webinar on March 8th from 10-11:30 A.M. This Women's Day we'll be focusing and having a discussion on Women's Health. Use this link to register: https://qfreeaccountssjc1.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dcWrGRgAi2JSCG2.

Mark your calendars! Our fall webinar, Human-Animal Interactions in Health & Disease, will be on November 15th from 10-11:30 a.m. We hope you'll join us for a discussion to learn more about the current research happening in these areas. RSVP by using this link: https://qfreeaccountssjc1.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_78PFC6RujCykfhY.

Join us for the third segment of the NIFA webinar series, “Prioritizing Nutrition Security: NIFA Elevates Youth and Families,”. The webinar is today from 3-4:30PM EST (2-3:30PM CST). The registration link is on our website.

Today is the LAST day to submit an abstract! Don't miss out on presenting your research this year. Find our abstract guidelines: www.depts.ttu.edu/research/obesityresearch/Guidelines2020.php. If you haven't registered yet, there's still time! Use this link to register: www.depts.ttu.edu/research/obesityresearch/meetings/2021-registration.php. We look forward to this year's meeting!

We are inviting anyone who isn’t presenting to volunteer as a judge for abstracts/video presentations, whether they are students, postdocs, research staff or faculty. This is a great experience, especially for students and postdocs. If you have any questions, email us [email protected].

Check out this article about Dr. Naima Moustaid-Moussa, the ORI Founder and Director, was just named Paul W. Horn Distinguished Professor. Join us in congratulating her on this huge accomplishment! Learn more about her story here: https://today.ttu.edu/posts/2021/03/Stories/naima-moustaid-moussa-named-horn-professor.

Naïma Moustaïd-Moussa Named Horn Professor | Texas Tech Today | TTU The internationally renowned scientist leads Texas Tech’s Obesity Research Institute.

Join us for our Annual Event this year on May 12th from 9-11AM & 1-3PM via Zoom. We're so excited to be able to host our annual meeting again this year. Education, Environment, and Health Disparities: Opportunities as a Hispanic Serving Institution will be informative and can serve as a place for you to present your research. Use this link to register: http://bit.ly/TTUORI2021 and use this link to find more information on abstract submissions: http://bit.ly/TTUORIAbstract. We hope to see you there!

Join us for our 6th Annual Meeting on May 12th from 9-11A.M. & 1-3P.M. This year's theme is Education, Environment, & Health Disparities: Opportunities as a Hispanic Serving Institution. You don't want to miss these presentations. Stay tuned for more information regarding registration & abstract submissions!

Don't forget, we have a webinar tomorrow, March 2nd, from 1-3P.M!

Upcoming Webinar Alert!

Join us for our next webinar, USDA/NIFA Funding Opportunities, on March 2nd from 1-3 PM. We're excited to learn about ways to further research through getting more funding. Use this link to register: http://bit.ly/TTUUSDANIFA

Member Highlight!

This week's member is Chiquito Cratso, Ph.D. Chiquito J. Crasto is a Research Associate Professor at the Center for Biotechnology and Genomics, TTU. He also has a graduate Adjunct faculty position at the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Crasto, a recipient of the Government of India National Merit Scholarship, graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology. He holds a doctorate in Chemistry from the University of New Orleans.
Dr. Crasto was awarded the prestigious Plain and Fancy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. Dr. Crasto continued his research at Yale University School of Medicine at the Department of Neuroscience and the Center for Medical Informatics as an Associate Research Scientist. As part of the SenseLab project, funded by the Human Brain Project, at the Yale University School of Medicine, Chiquito became the Scientific Coordinator of the olfactory databases. He currently maintains these resources in a continuous collaboration with Yale.

At the Center for Biotechnology and Genomics (CBG), TTU, Dr. Crasto is the Manager of the Bioinformatics core, where he lends bioinformatics expertise to the domains of genomics and proteomics. Dr. Crasto also carries out personal research in the area of chemical senses, biological networks, bacterial genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics and computational biology software development. Dr. Crasto developed and has taught three graduate courses in Bioinformatics. An advocate for e-education, he has developed two online courses: Bioinformatics Methods and Biocomputing. Dr. Crasto led efforts to expand CBG's graduate program that now includes, in addition to a two-year Biotechnology MS degree, a one-year MS degree, two certification programs and a minor in Biotechnology. Dr. Crasto is a 2019 President of TTU Leadership Fellow. He is also a professional audiobook producer and has made more than 150 audio books.

Member Highlight!

This week's member is Theresa Byrd, Ph.D., MPH, RN. Dr. Byrd is the Chair and Associate Dean of the Department of Public Health. She has spent most of her career working with US-Mexico border and migrant populations. She has been involved in several projects aimed at understanding the attitudes and beliefs of Hispanic women and has participated in the development of interventions to change health behavior. In a CDC funded project, she and her colleagues developed a theory-based intervention to increase cervical cancer screening in Hispanic women, which was found to be highly effective in a clinical trial. She has also been involved in the development of an intervention to increase colorectal cancer screening, an intervention to help men make decisions about prostate cancer treatment, and the development and testing of a CD-ROM on cancer genetics for Hispanic women.

Dr. Byrd's career has largely been devoted to community-based research with US-Mexico border and migrant populations. She has been involved in projects aimed at understanding the health-related attitudes and beliefs of Hispanics, and in the development of interventions to change health behaviors (e.g. cancer prevention and screening, initiation of prenatal care, breast–feeding, environmental risk and car safety. Currently, she is Co-Investigator on two Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) funded grants; De Casa en Casa (increasing cervical cancer screening) and Success (colorectal cancer screening). She also has recently received an American Cancer Society Healthcare Community of Practice grant focused on increasing colorectal cancer screening in West Texas.

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