Chaoran Ma Named 2026-27 CRF Family Research Scholar
The CRF chooses faculty members each year for the program based on their promising work in family-related research.
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Assistant Professor of Nutrition Chaoran Ma is among the six 2026-27 Family Research Scholars selected by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Research on Families (CRF).
Since 2003, The Center for Research on Families has hosted the Family Research Scholars Program. This year-long interdisciplinary seminar is designed to assist faculty in various stages of research by providing faculty and peer mentorship, as well as the opportunity for national expert consultation with the goal of preparing a successful grant proposal.
The twenty-third cohort of the Family Research Scholars was selected based on their promising work in family-related research. In an effort to broaden CRF's commitment to interdisciplinary research, this year's cohort represents five colleges across the UMass Amherst campus.
Ma’s research focuses on understanding age-related chronic complex diseases, especially cancer and neurodegeneration, and how modifiable risk factors, including diet and behavioral factors, affect the disease processes. Her work uses nutritional and molecular epidemiological approaches integrating multiomics (e.g., genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) data and artificial intelligence technique. Recently, her work has expanded to the gut microbiome and its interaction with diet on diseases. She seeks to understand how the complex interplay of genetic, metabolic, and the gut microbial factors affect the variability of individuals’ responses to dietary intakes, and to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the roles of dietary and behavioral factors in etiology, progression, and survival of age-related chronic diseases. The ability to identify useful biomarkers and individuals at high risk for age-related diseases will provide new opportunities for early intervention, and thus could have a substantial impact on advancing precision health.
During her time as a CRF Family Research Scholar, Ma will work on a research proposal titled “Diet, Hormone Signaling, and Epigenetics in Bladder Cancer: Investigating Risk, Mechanisms and Biomarkers.”
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Chaoran Ma
