Saroja Voruganti, PhD
Director of Clinical Research Core, Professor of Nutrition

Dr. Saroja Voruganti, Professor of Nutrition, is working on building a nationally and internationally recognized research program in nutritional genomics at UNC. A unique field, nutritional genomics seeks to identify genetic susceptibility to diseases, effect of genetic variation on nutrient metabolism and the effect of nutrients on gene expression. She has extensively investigated the interplay between nutritional and genetic factors influencing disease risk in ethnically diverse populations, especially minority populations such as Mexican American, American Indian, Alaska Native, Parsi Zoroastrian and Hispanic children populations. Her research is focused on uncovering new connections between genetics, nutrition, and epidemiology that can lead to more accurate determination disease risk and new treatment options for metabolic diseases. The key areas of her research program include:

Gene-nutrient interactions affecting purine metabolism and related neurodegenerative diseases
Genetic and environmental factors affecting complex diseases such as obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes in ethnically diverse populations

At UNC Chapel Hill, she teaches graduate courses, “Nutrigenetics and Nutrigenomics” and “Introduction to Nutritional Epidemiology”. At UNC NRI, she conducts an annual workshop-style course that covers the fundamental concepts of nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics and personalized nutrition. In addition to presentations by experts, the course includes hands-on analysis of genetic data using the latest tools.

She is the co-Director of Precision Nutrition Core at the Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC), UNC Chapel Hill. In this role, she is working towards implementing a comprehensive support system for nutrigenomic & nutrigenetic research, including individualized consultation and advising of researchers, with the long-term goal of enabling a better understanding of the effects of interaction between lifestyle and genotypes on health and disease. She is presently serving as an Associate Editor of the Frontiers in Genetics and Frontiers in Nutrition journals and is a Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA).

She earned her Ph.D. in Nutrition from The University of Texas at Austin in 2005. She did her post-doctoral training and subsequently was a Staff Scientist at Texas Biomedical Research Institute. Dr. Voruganti joined the faculty at UNC NRI and Department of Nutrition at UNC Chapel Hill in 2013 and was promoted to Associate Professor in October 2019. She has published extensively, including 120 research articles (13 as senior author and 20 as first author) with 30 articles in top tier journals.