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The Department of Food Science and Nutrition at Illinois Tech presents its fall 2025 seminar series featuring guest speaker, Xiaoran Liu, assistant professor at Rush University Medical Center, who will present “More Than Food for Thought: Nutrition’s Role in Brain Health and Related Pathways.” This seminar will take place on Thursday, October 23, 2025, from 12:45–1:45 p.m. in room 111 of the Pritzker Science Center.

Abstract

This presentation will focus on how key nutrients and dietary patterns can help prevent cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. It will discuss how other risk factors, such as social determinants, influence diet choices and their relation to brain health, providing new insights to inform prevention efforts in dementia and cognitive aging.

Biography

Xiaoran Liu is an assistant professor at Rush University Medical Center with research expertise in nutrition epidemiology and precision-nutrition approaches to Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive aging. She earned her Ph.D. in nutritional sciences from Pennsylvania State University, where she investigated the effects of diet on metabolic syndrome risk. Liu then completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, focusing on advanced nutrition epidemiology and clinical trials. Now at Rush University, her research integrates diet, social determinants, and genetics—particularly the role of APOE -ε4—in brain health. Liu leads NIH-funded projects and has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, including work published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. She is an active member of the American Society for Nutrition and the Alzheimer’s Association.