Patricia Wolf

Areas of Expertise

• Microbial Metabolism, Health Disparities Research, Nutrition and Dietetics

HHS Signature Research Area(s)

• Healthy Lifestyles and Vital Longevity

Department of Nutrition Science Research Area(s)

• Carcinogenesis and Cancer Prevention

Biography

Dr. Wolf completed her PhD in Nutritional Sciences with a focus on microbial sulfur metabolism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During her graduate training, she simultaneously completed the Didactic Program in Dietetics and became a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. She then was a postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Education and Career Development Program NCI T32 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research investigates microbial mechanisms of cancer health disparities related to inequitable food access and quality. To do so, she uses techniques in molecular microbiology and novel enzyme characterization to understand the metabolic capacity of the human gut microbiome. With her expertise in nutrition and dietetics, she then examines whether dietary intake shifts microbial ecology and function toward the formation of deleterious microbial metabolites contributing to cancer risk. Given that dietary behaviors are shaped by the social and structural environment, her future work will explore relationships between the neighborhood food environment and microbial metabolism in order to mitigate the inequitable burden of cancer in certain groups.

Education

• Bachelors, 2006, State University of New York College at Buffalo
• PhD, 2018, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• RDN, 2019, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Postdoc, 2019-2022, University of Illinois Chicago

Social Media Accounts

• @PatriciaGWolf1 Twitter