SURF Faculty Mentors

Dr. Low is Professor of the Departments of Molecular & Integrative Physiology and Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. He is also an Investigator of the Brehm Center for Diabetes Research. Research in his lab is focused on determining how the hypothalamus integrates environmental and interoceptive sensory information to maintain neuroendocrine homeostasis and energy balance. He is an internationally recognized expert in the generation and analysis of mutant mouse models and currently uses a combination of molecular genetic, endocrine, and behavioral approaches to characterize the physiological functions of neuropeptides and G-protein coupled receptors that are highly expressed in hypothalamic neural circuits, particularly proopiomelanocortin (POMC), MC4-receptor, enkephalin, dynorphin, mu-opioid receptor, corticotropin releasing hormone, somatostatin, dopamine, and dopamine D2-like receptors. POMC neurons play a critical role in the regulation of appetite and metabolism and dysfunction in their associated neural circuits can produce morbid obesity. A current major project in the Low lab is to dissect the functional significance of the recently discovered neuronal enhancers in POMC using targeted deletions of individual or multiple enhancer sequences in mutant mice.

Dr. Low is NOT accepting summer fellows for 2022.

Dr. MacDougald is the John A. Faulkner Collegiate Professor of Physiology within the Molecular & Integrative Physiology department. To combat the rising incidence of obesity and associated metabolic diseases, the goal of his lab is to investigate how adipocytes throughout the body develop, function, and interact with other cell types near and afar.

Dr. Pennathur is the Professor of Nephrology, Department of Medicine and Molecular and Integrative Physiology. He also directs the NIDDK funded Michigan Kidney Translational Research Center. His laboratory has a long-standing interest in understanding the chemistry and biochemistry of metabolic changes that underlie obesity, diabetes and its complications, including diabetic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. The lab utilizes mass spectrometric methods to study lipoprotein biology, oxidant injury mechanisms (oxidative stress marker discovery and quantitation), lipid inflammatory mediators, metabolomics, and lipidomics in animal models and humans with diabetic complications and inflammatory disorders. Employing metabolomic and lipidomic profiling, data analysis, and bioinformatics to interrogate model systems, his laboratory has identified disease specific nodes for intervention in variety of metabolic diseases. These studies utilize systems and integrative biology of combining multi-omic data sets, which can provide ideal training opportunities for students interested in quantitative sciences.

Dr. Rui is Professor of Molecular & Integrative Physiology. His laboratory studies the physiological and molecular mechanisms of obesity, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes, using genetic, physiological, molecular and biochemical approaches. Obesity is the primary risk factor for fatty liver diseases and type 2 diabetes and type 2 diabetes is caused by defects in both insulin production and insulin action (e.g. insulin resistance in the liver, muscle, fat and brain). Ongoing areas of study in the Rui laboratory include: (1) examination of the signal transduction pathways in hypothalamic neurons that regulate energy homeostasis and body weight, (2) investigating molecular defects in hypothalamic neural circuits that cause leptin resistance, energy imbalance and obesity, 3) studying glucose and lipid metabolism under both normal and obese conditions and focusing on the hepatic gluconeogenic and lipogenic programs as well as on the molecular mechanisms of insulin resistance in liver, adipose tissue and muscle.

Dr. Rui is NOT accepting summer fellows for 2022.

My research interest is in studying posttranslational modifications of transcription factors in glucose and lipid metabolism. A combination of genetic, molecular and biochemical approaches is employed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying the posttranslational modifications as well as the physiological consequences on glucose and lipid homeostasis.