(Press-News.org) BATON ROUGE – Pennington Biomedical Research Center is proud to announce that Dr. Steven B. Heymsfield, Professor of Metabolism and Body Composition, has been named a Boyd Professor of Louisiana State University – the highest faculty rank and honor awarded within the LSU System.
The Boyd Professorship is reserved for faculty whose outstanding achievements and international reputations bring significant prestige to LSU. Dr. Heymsfield joins an elite group of scholars recognized for advancing knowledge and transforming their fields.
"Dr. Heymsfield represents the pinnacle of scientific excellence in the fields of obesity, metabolism, and body composition research," remarked Dr. John Kirwan, Executive Director of Pennington Biomedical. "His revolutionary insights and profound contributions to medical science have positioned Pennington Biomedical, LSU, and the state of Louisiana as internationally recognized centers of innovation. We are deeply honored to have him as both an esteemed colleague and a pioneering force who continues to reshape our field."
Dr. Heymsfield’s career spans more than four decades of pioneering work that has reshaped our understanding of human energy balance, body composition and obesity treatment. He has authored more than 1,300 scientific publications, including several landmark studies cited by researchers worldwide, with nearly 79,000 citations and an H-index of 140 – placing him among the top 500 most-cited researchers globally.
Over a career spanning more than five decades, he developed advances in clinical nutrition, imaging technologies, metabolic modeling, and obesity therapeutics, with innovations that are now standard practice worldwide. His transformative work ranges from developing flexible feeding tubes that revolutionized enteral nutrition, to creating advanced imaging and body composition methods using CT, DXA, and 3D optical scanning, to building physiologically grounded energy metabolism models that have reshaped obesity science.
He played a major role in developing evaluation protocols and treatment methods related to protein-calorie malnutrition, sarcopenia, obesity and other disorders associated with adipose tissue and skeletal muscle. Over the past several years, he has worked on developing new imaging devices such as 3D laser body scanning for phenotyping body shape, including machine-learning algorithms, as related to body composition.
Dr. Heymsfield participates in an international group with colleagues at Harvard, Cornell, and Cambridge universities focused on elaborating the mechanisms of cancer cachexia at the genetic, molecular and whole-body levels in animal models and in humans with advanced malignancies.
Dr. Heymsfield is a past president of several leading organizations, including The Obesity Society, the American Society of Clinical Nutrition, and the American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. In 2020, he served as a member of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, shaping national nutrition policy. He was Executive Director of Pennington Biomedical from 2010-2013
Throughout his career, Dr. Heymsfield has been widely recognized for his contributions to science and public health. Among his many honors are the George A. Bray Founders Award from The Obesity Society (2016); the W.O. Atwater Award from the American Society for Nutrition (2018); and an appointment as an Amazon Scholar (2021–2023), where he collaborated with Amazon scientists to advance digital health innovations.
Dr. Heymsfield becomes Pennington Biomedical’s fifth Boyd Professor, joining David York, George Bray, Eric Ravussin and Claude Bouchard as Boyd honorees.
About the Pennington Biomedical Research Center
The Pennington Biomedical Research Center is at the forefront of medical discovery as it relates to understanding the triggers of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia. Pennington Biomedical has the vision to lead the world in promoting nutrition and metabolic health and eliminating metabolic disease through scientific discoveries that create solutions from cells to society. The center conducts basic, clinical, and population research, and is a campus in the LSU System.
The research enterprise at Pennington Biomedical includes over 600 employees within a network of 44 clinics and research laboratories, and 16 highly specialized core service facilities. Its scientists and physician/scientists are supported by research trainees, lab technicians, nurses, dietitians, and other support personnel. Pennington Biomedical is a globally recognized state-of-the-art research institution in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
For more information, see www.pbrc.edu.
END
Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Steven Heymsfield named LSU Boyd Professor – LSU’s highest faculty honor
2025-09-05
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Study prompts new theory of human-machine communication
2025-09-05
Hed: Study prompts new theory of human-machine communication
LAWRENCE – In a new paper, two University of Kansas scholars propose a novel theory of communication analysis that takes into better account how people interact with ubiquitous technology in the 21st-century workplace.
In “Socio-Technical Exchange with Machines: Worker Experiences with Complex Work Technologies,” ----- link to https://doi.org/10.30658/hmc.10.3 ----------- in the Human-Machine Communications ...
New method calculates rate of gene expression to understand cell fate
2025-09-05
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Essentially all cells in an organism’s body have the same genetic blueprint, or genome, but the set of genes that are actively expressed at any given time in a cell determines what type of cell it will be and its function. How rapidly gene expression in a single cell changes over time can provide insight into how cells might become more specialized, but current measurement approaches are limited. A new method developed by researchers at Penn State and Yale University incorporates spatial information from the cell as well as data from cells processed at different times, improving researchers’ ability to understand the nuances of gene expression ...
Researchers quantify rate of essential evolutionary process in the ocean
2025-09-05
The movement of genetic material between organisms that aren’t directly related is a significant driver of evolution, especially among single-celled organisms like bacteria and archaea. A team led by researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences have now estimated that an average cell line acquires and retains roughly 13 percent of its genes every million years via this process of lateral gene transfer. That equates to about 250 genes swapped per liter of seawater every day.
The new study, recently published in The ISME Journal, provides the first quantitative analysis of gene transfer rates across an entire microbiome. It calls into question the strict classification ...
Innovation Crossroads companies join forces, awarded U.S. Air Force contract
2025-09-05
The U.S. Air Force awarded startup SkyNano, led by Innovation Crossroads alumna Anna Douglas, a $1.25 million contract to advance its CO2-to-carbon nanotube technology as part of a project to develop low-cost, battery-grade graphite. SkyNano’s partners include American Energy Technologies Company and Eonix, led by Innovation Crossroads alumnus Don DeRosa.
SkyNano and Eonix were recruited to Knoxville through Innovation Crossroads, a Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program node at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
“In addition to accessing ...
Using new blood biomarkers, USC researchers find Alzheimer’s disease trial eligibility differs among various populations
2025-09-05
Some of the populations with the highest risk for Alzheimer’s disease remain greatly underrepresented in clinical trials—and a new study helps explain why. Researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC found that participants from these high-risk groups are less likely to have elevated amyloid in the brain based on blood levels of p-tau217. Elevated amyloid is a requirement for clinical trials of Alzheimer’s disease treatments, and amyloid is known to accumulate in the brain years before any signs of cognitive decline.
The study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), builds on earlier research with similar findings, but leverages ...
Pioneering advances in in vivo CAR T cell production
2025-09-05
This review article highlights the transformative potential of in vivo CAR T cell therapy in addressing the limitations of traditional CAR T cell production. This innovative approach could revolutionize cancer treatment, offering a more efficient, scalable, and cost-effective alternative to conventional methods.
CAR T cell therapy has shown remarkable success in treating hematological malignancies; however, current production methods are laborious, time-consuming, and expensive. Traditional in vitro CAR T cell production typically requires 2–3 weeks and involves complex processes, including T cell isolation, activation, genetic modification, ...
Natural medicines target tumor vascular microenvironment to inhibit cancer growth
2025-09-05
Recent advances in cancer treatment highlight the potential of natural medicines to target the tumor vascular microenvironment, offering a novel strategy to inhibit tumor growth and metastasis. Unlike conventional therapies that directly target tumor cells, natural compounds focus on normalizing tumor vasculature and inhibiting pathological angiogenesis, crucial processes in cancer progression. This innovative approach holds promise in enhancing anti-cancer therapies while minimizing side effects.
The tumor vascular microenvironment plays a pivotal role in cancer development. Tumor blood vessels are often irregular, immature, ...
Coral-inspired pill offers a new window into the hidden world of the gut
2025-09-05
In the depths of the ocean, marine corals have evolved intricate, porous structures that shelter diverse microbial communities.
Now, researchers have borrowed this biological blueprint to create an ingestible pill that can sample bacteria from one of the most inaccessible regions of the human body: the small intestine.
The CORAL (Cellularly Organized Repeating Lattice) capsule, developed by Khalil Ramadi – assistant professor of bioengineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) – and ...
nTIDE September2025 Jobs Report: Employment for people with disabilities surpasses prior high
2025-09-05
East Hanover, NJ – September 5, 2025 – The latest National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) report shows that, in contrast to people without disabilities, the employment and labor force participation of people with disabilities of people with disabilities increased, narrowly reaching all-time highs, according to nTIDE experts. nTIDE is issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability.
Month-to-Month nTIDE Numbers (comparing July 2025 to August 2025)
Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Jobs Report released today, the employment-to-population ratio ...
When getting a job makes you go hungry
2025-09-05
Key points:
Utah refugees face very high levels of food insecurity.
Food insecurity spikes when refugees become ineligible for food assistance.
Proposed solutions include improving education about resources and increasing access to gardens.
IMPACT: Timely interventions to reduce food insecurity could benefit health and save the U.S. healthcare system billions.
Three months ago, you left your country fearing for your life.
Now, you’re learning to navigate a new city, where the street signs are in a new language. You’re ...