Meet the leadership
Dr. Barbara Rolls is the Program Director of COPT. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and received her Ph.D. in physiology from the University of Cambridge, England. After spending her early research career at the University of Oxford, England, Dr. Rolls joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as Professor of Psychiatry. In 1992, she became a faculty member at The Pennsylvania State University where she is Professor and the Helen A. Guthrie Chair of Nutritional Sciences.
Dr. Rolls’ research includes characterization of mechanisms that control thirst as well as studies of hunger, satiety, and obesity. Her studies that received a MERIT award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases have demonstrated how characteristics of foods such as variety, energy density, and portion size can influence energy intake across the lifespan. She has published more than 250 research articles and six books including Thirst, The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan, The Volumetrics Eating Plan, and The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet.
Dr. Rolls has served as President of both the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior and The Obesity Society. She has also served on the Advisory Council of NIDDK and on the National Task Force on the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity.
Her awards include: Honorary Member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, International Award for Modern Nutrition, Atwater Lecturer, ASN Centrum Award in Human Nutrition, The Obesity Society’s George A. Bray Founders Award, ASN’s Fellows Class of 2011, and the David Kritchevsky Career Achievement Award.
Dr. Kathleen Keller serves as a co-program director of COPT. Dr. Keller received her PhD in Nutritional Sciences from Rutgers University in 2002 and completed her post-doctoral training on a T32 funded training grant at the New York Nutrition Obesity Research Center. In 2005, she received a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health to study the relationship between genetic variation in bitter taste, eating behavior and obesity risk in children. In 2012, she began a position at Penn State to develop a research program focused on integrating brain imaging using fMRI with the study of eating behavior in children.
Dr. Keller’s current studies are aimed at identifying the neural, genetic, and environmental predictors of eating behaviors in children. She is currently an Assistant Professor in both the Departments of Nutritional Sciences and Food Science at Penn State and the first Mark T. Greenberg Early Career Professor for the Study of Children’s Health and Development. She also directs the Metabolic Kitchen and Children’s Eating Behavior Laboratory, a shared research facility dedicated to the study of eating behavior and nutrition in children and families.
Dr. Jennifer Savage Williams also serves as a co-program director. Dr. Savage Williams earned her degree in Nutrition in 2008 from Penn State University. Her research interests include: Developing individualized, adaptive prenatal and postnatal interventions to promote health across the lifespan; Examining the effects of responsive parenting on children’s development of eating behaviors and health outcomes; and Building community partnerships to develop efficient and effective interventions that use electronic-health, multi-media technology to target low-income mothers to reduce children’s intake of “empty calories.”
Julie Arnold provides essential administrative grant support as the COPT program assistant.
Students (see Meet the Fellows page for individual bios) :
Admitted 2011-2012: Katherine Balantekin (NUTR), Brittany James (NUTR), Samantha Kling (NUTR), Chelsea Rose (NUTR), Julia Bleser (HDFS)
Admitted 2012-2013: Allison Doub (HDFS), Nicole Fearnbach (NUTR), Jacinda Li (HDFS), Wendy Stein (NUTR)
Admitted 2013-2014: Shana Adise (NUTR), Laural English (NUTR), Kameron Moding (HDFS), Nicole Roberts (HDFS)
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