Jim Kaput

Dr Kaput is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and a senior scientist in the Bioinformatics Shared Resource Core of the NCMHD Center of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics at the University of California Davis.  He recently established the Laboratory of Nutrigenomic Medicine in collaboration with several scientists, nutritionists, and physicians at the University of Illinois Chicago.  The UIC group is analyzing candidate genes associated with Type 2 diabetes and obesity in patients at the Univeristy of Illinois Chicago Nurtition and Wellness Center in collaboration with the UC Davis Center of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics.    Dr. Kaput organized and co-wrote a grant to the NIH that established a Center of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics, addressing minority health disparities in the Northern California region.His functions in the Center are to manage the nutrigenomics listserve (he is the only contributor to emails describing science of nutrigenomics – as of November 2005, there were ~1100 individuals in at least 42 countries on the list), to develop the website information, present workshops on nutritional genomics, and to aid in organizing conferences in addition to his research activities.  He was co-chair of the organizing committee of the Bruce Ames International Symposium on Nutritional Genomics (Oct 2004) and is co-chair of the organizing committee for a conference entitled:  Genomics, Race, and Health Disparities to be held in March 2006 in Oakland, CA.

Dr. Kaput developed a nutrigenomics research program within two academic institutions (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University, Chicago and Evanston, IL) from 1993 through 1998.  He was in a series of biotechnology companies (some of which he founded and managed) from 1998 through present.

Dr. Kaput received his PhD from Colorado State University in Biochemistry and Molecular.  He spent 5 years as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at the Rockefeller University in the laboratory of GÜnter Blobel, the 1999 Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine.  Dr. Kaput was a staff and Biochemistry faculty member at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and Director of the Northwestern University Biotechnology Laboratory for 2 years

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