Anna E. Thalacker-mercer PhD

I graduated from the University of Georgia with a B.S. in Biological Science. I did my graduate training at Purdue University where I received a Ph.D. through the Interdepartmental Nutrition Program in the Department of Nutrition Science (formerly Foods and Nutrition). During my graduate research training I developed a strong background in geriatric nutrition, nutritional genomics, protein metabolism, and the mechanisms of aging skeletal muscle. While analyzing and interpreting the influence of dietary intake on the skeletal muscle transcriptome, I recognized that exercise is necessary for successful health and appreciated the need for training in exercise physiology. Additionally, I developed a keen interest in molecular changes occurring in the skeletal muscle with age, particularly inflammatory and stress responses, which may influence age-related skeletal muscle atrophy (i.e. sarcopenia) and metabolic dysfunction leading to increased adiposity and metabolic disease in older adults. The need for additional training and my developed interests led me to the Center for Exercise Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to study the efficacy of exercise as a therapy for health-related disease and muscle re-growth. I applied to the competitive NIH funded T32 Obesity Training Program and the Center for Aging Translational Research Program at UAB where I completed my postdoctoral fellowship. In December of 2010, I was promoted to Assistant Professor in the UAB Department of Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology, with affiliations and support through the UAB Center for Exercise Medicine, the Center for Aging, the Nutrition Obesity Research Center, and the NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award, locally named the Center for Clinical and Translational Science at UAB. During my short time as an Assistant Professor at UAB, I continued to study the mechanisms underlying the observed age-related skeletal muscle phenotypes, and began to appreciate sex differences in aging muscle. Observed differences in the aging female muscle transcriptome sparked my interest in metabolomics and led me to develop collaborations to understand the link between amino acid metabolism and insulin sensitivity. In 2012 I was recruited to the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University.