CMPR Leadership
Consortium Director Emilyn Alejandro, Ph.D. is a Land-Grant McKnight Professor, McKnight Presidential Fellow, and Bacaner Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology (IBP) at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Her research program is primarily supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).
Dr. Alejandro serves on the faculty of several Ph.D. programs, including Integrative Biology and Physiology; Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology, and Genetics; Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics; and Pharmacology. She is also a preceptor in the Medical Scientist Training Program and the Master’s Program in Stem Cell Biology.
She holds the Marvin and Hadassah Bacaner Chair in Cardiovascular Physiology and is the associate director of the T32 Training Program in Systems Biology of Cardiovascular Inflammation, and director of the R25 Postbac Readiness in Metabolism, Endocrinology and Diabetes. Her research focuses on nutrient-sensing proteins in the pancreas and placenta and their roles in normal physiology and the pathophysiology of diabetes and cardiometabolic disease.
Consortium Co-Director: Dr. Ellen Demerath is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Division of Epidemiology & Community Health in the School of Public Health. She is a senior investigator with nationally and internationally recognized expertise in the developmental origins of health and disease. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on nutrition, obesity, breastfeeding, and child growth and development. Her research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2005. She has served on federal expert panels on nutrition during pregnancy, breastfeeding and human milk, and infant adiposity sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences.