🎧 Agriculture–Food–Health Linkages in Latin America with Dr. Andres Jaramillo-Botero and Dr. Natalia Vázquez Manjarrez
This week on the podcast, learn about how -omics technologies are unveiling the building blocks of our foods!
What can the building blocks of our food ingredients tell us about our health and the health of our planet? This week on the show, we discuss the fields of metabolomics and lipidomics with experts Dr. Andres Jaramillo-Botero and Dr. Natalia Vázquez Manjarrez. Andres is the founding Director of the iOMICAS Research Institute, a Rockefeller Foundation PTFI Center of Excellence focused on elucidating and democratizing access to food composition at the molecular level and led since 2018 the international research alliance, ÓMICAS, a multi-omics crop breeding optimization program funded by the Colombian government through the World Bank’s PACES program. Natalia leads the Metabolomics Unit within the Department of Nutrition Physiology at the National Institute of Medical Sciences Salvador Zubirán in Mexico City. We examine diet from the molecular level and discuss where the future of food might take us!
This podcast is sponsored by The Periodic Table of Food Initiative in association with the American Heart Association. The views and opinions in this podcast are those of the presenters and represent the synthesis of science. For more information on the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, please visit https://foodperiodictable.org/
About Andres
Dr. Andres Jaramillo-Botero is a distinguished professor and scientist specializing in nanoscale science, focused on addressing major global challenges (sustainable ecosystems, climate change, clean energy, health, food security, and symbiotic materials) by integrating engineering, physical chemistry, biology, and computational sciences using a bottom-up approach. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, a Master of Science in Computer Science (as a Fulbright Scholar), and a Doctorate in Engineering (Nano-systems dynamics), with his doctoral dissertation completed as an Invited Researcher at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research as an NSF fellow at Caltech and UCLA’s Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics. Dr. Jaramillo-Botero joined Caltech full-time in 2006 as a key Lead Scientist and Lecturer in the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Division, and he also serves as Director of Nanotechnology and Multiscale Science at the Materials and Process Simulation Center. In Colombia, he has been a vital part of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ) since 1990, holding numerous leadership roles, including as a member of the University’s Board of Regents, the Council of Directors, and as Dean of Engineering at its Cali campus. He achieved full professorship in 1999 and was inducted into the PUJ honor society in 2001. Dr. Jaramillo-Botero is the founding Director of the iOMICAS Research Institute, a Rockefeller Foundation PTFI Center of Excellence focused on elucidating and democratizing access to food composition at the molecular level and led since 2018 the international research alliance, ÓMICAS, a multi-omics crop breeding optimization program funded by the Colombian government through the World Bank’s PACES program. Dr. Jaramilllo-Botero’s research spans from omics characterization and optimization of biological organisms, identification, and detection of biomarkers associated with stress or disease, astrobiology, non-adiabatic dynamics of molecules and materials, nanoscale systems’ characterization, properties’ optimization, and control. He is a recognized scientific consultant and author and serves on the editorial boards of several prominent journals in his fields of expertise.
About Natalia
Dr. Natalia Vázquez Manjarrez did her undergraduate studies in Human Nutrition and Food Sciences. She earned her Master of Science degree with honors from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Subsequently, she pursued her Ph.D. and postdoctoral studies at the University of Copenhagen, where she specialized in nutritional metabolomics. Presently, Natalia is a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico. She leads the Metabolomics Unit within the Department of Nutrition Physiology at the National Institute of Medical Sciences Salvador Zubirán in Mexico City. In this role, she oversees the targeted metabolomics platform and advances analytical methodologies. Her research focuses on elucidating the nutritional composition of foods and identifying dietary biomarkers, aiming to clarify the intricate relationship between diet and health. Within the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI), she serves as the Principal Investigator of the Center of Excellence, where the lipidomics method has been onboarded to explore lipid profiling in both plant- and animal-based foods. Beyond her research, Natalia is deeply committed to advancing the scientific community through education and public science engagement, demonstrating her dedication to fostering a comprehensive understanding of nutrition science.
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Yours in health, Dr. Quave
Cassandra L. Quave, Ph.D. is a Guggenheim Fellow, CNN Champion for Change, Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, recipient of The National Academies Award for Excellence in Science Communication, and award-winning author of The Plant Hunter. Her day job is as professor and herbarium curator at Emory University School of Medicine, where she leads a group of research scientists studying medicinal plants to find new life-saving drugs from nature. She hosts the Foodie Pharmacology podcast and writes the Nature’s Pharmacy newsletter to share the science behind natural medicines. To support her effort, consider a paid or founding subscription to Nature’s Pharmacy or donation to her lab research.
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