Journal of Nutrition and Health Sciences

Dr. Baum received her Bachelor’s degree in Dietetics in 2000 and her PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004 where she studied the impact of dietary protein and branched-chain amino acids on insulin signaling, gluconeogenesis, glycemic regulation and body composition. Following her PhD, Dr. Baum was a postdoctoral fellow at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania from 2004-2006. There she continued to investigate amino acids and their impact on cell signaling and protein synthesis. After her postdoc training, Dr. Baum moved to the Netherlands from 2007-2012 and to a job in industry with Unilever as a Research Scientist studying body composition and fat distribution during weight loss. Following her time at Unilever, Dr. Baum was a Nutrition Scientist and Science Communications Manager at Danone Center for Specialized Nutrition in the Netherlands, where she focused on research in the area of infant and toddler nutrition and the impact diet early in life can have on health later in life. Dr. Baum has been an Assistant Professor of Nutrition in the Department of Food Science and a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Program at the University of Arkansas since 2012. Dr. Baum is the Chair of the Energy and Macronutrient Metabolism Research Interest Section of the American Society for Nutrition and is the Society’s representative for Federations of American Societies for Experimental Biology’s (FASEB) Publications and Communications Committee. Dr. Baum’s research focuses on the role of dietary protein on body composition, energy metabolism and metabolic health throughout the lifecycle.

• The role of dietary protein quality and quantity on molecular mechanisms of energy metabolism
• The role of branched-chain amino acids in energy metabolism and type 2 diabetes
• The relationship between protein intake and metabolic health