Advisor: Rosa A. Mo, Lecturer, EdD, RD, Columbia University
This certificate is designed to provide students with a deep understanding of the close connections among nutrition, health, and disease as well as to provide them with a detailed study of the body of knowledge necessary to understand these connections and the evidence supporting them. The certificate in Nutritional Genomics provides the detailed understanding of the principles of nutritional genomics, such as how individual genetic variation can influence the assimilation and metabolism of nutrition and how nutrition can affect the expression of certain genes known to be involved in chronic diseases. It will introduce clinical genomic research tools and methods (gene expression profiling, proteomics, metabolomics, pharmacogenomics, and bioinformatics), which prepare students to study an individual's response to their nutritional environment. It will also introduce individualized nutritional strategies to prevent chronic diseases and to optimize human health.
Admission to the Nutritional Genomics Certificate: BS in Biology, Biotechnology, or Nutrition. It is expected that the applicant has significant background in one of the following fields: undergraduate biology, genetics, nutrition, organic chemistry, and/or biochemistry.