Skip to main content About News Giving All Departments Contact Us Site Map
 University of Texas Southwestern Medical School
 
Search       
Print Friendly  
spacer Home Education Research Patient Care Faculty & Administration Resource Careers
Centers & Departments Core Facilities Post Doctoral Fellowships Research Services Clinical Trials Technology Development Research Administration
| Home > Research > Centers & Departments > TORS >
TORS Investigators - Team 1: Central Regulators of Energy Metabolism
 Home 
 Investigators 
 Team 1 
 Team 2 
 Team 3 
 Team 4 
 Post-doc Fellowship Opportunities 
 Contact 
  
 Obesity Alliance - Thursday Weekly Conferences 
 TORS Monthly WIPS Schedule 
 Obesity Outreach Wednesday Weekly Conferences  
  
 Division of Hypothalamic Research 
 Department of Molecular Genetics 
 Silvio O. Conte Center for Neuroscience 
 McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development 
 Advanced Imaging Research Center 
 Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Core 
 Center for Human Nutrition 
 

 

Lead Investigator

Joel Elmquist, D.V.M., Ph.D. has identified new CNS pathways that contribute to the regulation of body weight. He has developed a series of genetically-modified mice that provide key reagents for the dissection of the relative roles of different hypothalamic signaling pathways in feeding and satiety. He was recently recruited from Harvard to direct a Center for Hypothalamic Research to study Obesity at UTSW. He is Chair of Integrative Physiology of Obesity and Diabetes study section.

Associate Investigators

Eric Nestler, M.D., Ph.D. is Chairman of Psychiatry and a leading investigator in molecular psychiatry. He defined many biochemical events associated with drug addiction in the brain; it is likely that many of these same pathways are involved in the processes that drive food intake.  He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the NIH Advisory Mental Health Council.

Keith Parker, M.D., Ph.D. is chief of the Division of Endocrinology. He discovered steroidogenic factor-1 (SF-1) was required for the development of steroidogenic tissues and discovered that deletion of SF-1 in the hypothalamus causes obesity in mice. He is the recipient of the Oppenheimer Award from the Endocrine Society, Transatlantic Medal from the British Endocrine Societies, and Research Award from the Society for the Study of Reproduction.

Masashi Yanagisawa M.D., Ph.D. is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He discovered both the ligands and the receptors for two key hormonal systems that regulate vascular tone and arousal (endothelins and orexins).   

Andrew Zinn, M.D., Ph.D. is a human geneticist who discovered that mutations in single-minded 1 (SIM1), a protein expressed in the hypothalamus, causes early onset obesity in humans.

Bassil M. Kublaoui, M.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics who was supported by the P20 as a Fellow. Now an independent investigator, he will decipher the mechanism by which single-minded 1 (SIM1) regulates body weight.

Carol A. Tamminga, M.D. is a psychiatrist and is a Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Dept. of Psychiatry.  She has expertise in human trials and clinical depression.  She helps to translate the molecular, genetic and neuroanatomic observations made in our unique models directly to the human brain.  She is also the Director of the Dallas Brain Bank, which is a key resource to the Taskforce on Obesity Research.