MBDC Project Leadership

Jacqueline Stephens

Principal Investigator, Jacqueline Stephens, PhD

Jacqueline Stephens, PhD, is the Center Director as well as the Claude B. Pennington Endowed Chair of Biomedical Research and Professor of the Adipocyte Biology lab. Her research program is focused on cellular signaling, transcriptional regulation, and the generation and metabolic phenotyping of novel animal models.

She has had sustained NIH funding since 1997, shortly after she started her own laboratory. Dr. Stephens has chaired several NIH study sections and currently serves on the CADO (Cellular Aspects of Diabetes and Obesity) review panel at the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). She has a strong commitment to mentoring and career development for the next generation of scientists. She served as Associate Chair in the Department of Biological Sciences at LSU (2009-2011), where she was responsible for overseeing more than 160 graduate students. She has served as Associate Executive Director for Basic Research at Pennington Biomedical (2013-2015) and also acted as Institutional Official for Animal Care and Use during that time. She is committed to providing mentoring to all of the junior scientists in relation to all aspects of grantsmanship, scientific rigor, career advancement, FAIR data principles as well as the PREPARE and ARRIVE guidelines.


Project Leader Project Title
Timothy Allerton, PhD
The Role of Hydrogen Sulfide in Adipose Tissue
Jennifer Sones, PhD The role of maternal obesity-driven inflammation and adverse pregnancy outcomes in a mouse model of preeclampsia
Susan Burke, PhD Role of fatty acid oxidation in islet beta-cell function
Timothy Heden, PhD
Noncanonical glycogen metabolism and hepatocellular carcinoma

This work is supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Grant 1P20GM135002-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences or the National Institutes of Health.