Dr. Soonkyu Chung, Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition, acquired her Ph.D. in Molecular Nutrition in 2006 at the U. of North Carolina and received a postdoctoral fellowship at the Wake Forest Medical Center. Dr. Chung is an adipocyte biologist, and her research interest centers on regulating lipid metabolism, signaling pathways in adipocytes, and preventing obesity. Her current projects examine the role of dietary factors in modulating adiposity, innate immunity, and brown thermogenesis toward preventing obesity and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Chung has been at the forefront of identifying the role of adipose tissue iron status in regulating metabolic homeostasis and brown thermogenesis. As a key component of her brown fat research, she also has a long-standing interest in developing transplantable-brown fat pads for humans as a therapeutic tool to treat type 2 diabetes. More recently, Chung's lab unveiled the novel signaling interaction between dietary fish oil consumption and heat therapy for metabolic improvement.