Peanut Cognition Study

Dr. Sujatha Rajaram, is a Professor of Nutrition at Loma Linda University School of Public Health. She is a Co-Investigator for the Mango Cardiometabolic Study. She has contributed significantly to the research activities at the Center for Nutrition, Healthy Lifestyle and Disease Prevention. She has served as both principal investigator and co-investigator on several clinical trials, specifically feeding studies on tree nuts, and plant omega-3 fatty acids with respect to cardiometabolic disease outcomes and healthy aging.

Samuel Barnes is a medical physicist, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology, and Director, Center for Imaging Research at LLUH. His research has focused largely on neuro-imaging MRI techniques such as examining the role of blood-brain barrier dysfunction on cognitive decline using dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI. He has recently received a pilot grant to investigate the association between n-3 PUFA, cognition and blood-brain barrier integrity.

Gabriela Chiriac is a first year student in the Nutrition PhD program at Loma Linda University School of Public Health. She is also a Registered Dietitian and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Nutrition at Nova Southeastern University in South Florida. Her main interest is in biochemistry and nutrition research.

Amandeep Kaur is a Research Manager at the Loma Linda University School of Public Health. She did her Master’s in Public Health at SPH. She has been working with the PI of the Mango Cardiovascular Study and the nutrition research team for the past five years. She has expertise in coordinating and managing the conduct of clinical trials. She has been involved with larger clinical trials like the Habitual Diet and Avocado Trail, which was a multi-center trial (UCLA, Tufts University, Penn State and Loma Linda University) with over a 1000 participants .She was the main coordinator for the Loma Linda site during the trial. Her role in Mango Cardiovascular Study will include among other things, the coordination of recruitment and selection of participants, clinic visits, and data collection and management.

Dr. Grace Lee is a clinical neuropsychologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Loma Linda University (LLU). After earning her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Dr. Lee completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Neuropsychology of Aging at the UCLA School of Medicine, Department of Neurology. During that time, her research and clinical training focused on studying cognitive aging and neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia and frontotemporal dementia. Since coming to LLU, Dr. Lee has expanded her research interests to explore the role of diet, exercise and other lifestyle factors in reducing the risk of cognitive decline associated with normal aging and neurodegenerative disease.

Dr. Rawiwan Sirirat is a research associate at Nutrition Research Center. She is a Registered Dietitian with doctoral degree of public health in Nutrition. Her main interest is in nutrition epidemiology. Dr. Sirirat has accumulated research experience over the years via multiple clinical trials as well as a large cohort study. Her experiences include nutrition data collections, quality control of the data as well as nutrition data management. She is also well acquainted with laboratory analyses of nutrition biomarkers, bio specimen processing and handling. She will be primarily involved in data and bio specimen collection and handling in this study.