Nicholas Neuwald

Nicholas Neuwald is a doctoral student in the Nutritional Sciences Program at Penn State. Prior to joining the program, he graduated from Baylor University, where he studied pre-medicine with a focus in ecology and evolutionary biology. Nick received his master’s degree in exercise physiology and human nutrition from the University of Miami and graduated in 2019. At Miami, Nick studied how diet intake influences the development of fat in adult men. He found that men who ate more processed food, including food with a higher concentration of sodium, tended to have more fat composition around the torso. This research sparked an interest in understanding eating behaviors in association with obesity prevention.

At Penn State, Nick is advised by Dr. Kathleen Keller. He was drawn to Penn State due to the rigor of research related to eating behaviors, and he was specifically interested in working with Dr. Keller because of her focus on eating behaviors in childhood. Nick hopes that a focus on childhood eating behaviors will lead to more effective interventions addressing obesity-related health. In his dissertation project, Nick developed a new framework for understanding how switching between different foods across meals and snacks may lead to an overall increase in food intake in childhood. He found that switching between foods is related to overall food intake, regardless of the amount of time spent eating, and is related to long-term increases in fat composition. These findings suggest that this switching behavior could be an important target for interventions related to the development of obesity. Nick has also been working on a computer-based application that assesses the ability to perceive internal signals related to hunger or thirst. He is currently testing his application with children and adults and hopes that this work will allow researchers to assess internal senses like these in non-invasive ways.

Nick recently accepted a post-doctoral position in the Department of Pediatrics at the University at Buffalo, where he plans to study how factors like food insecurity influence the risk for obesity. Long term, he plans to continue in academia by running his own research lab studying eating behaviors and obesity prevention.