I am a biological anthropologist, specializing in contemporary human variation. My research focuses on maternal micronutrient nutrition and immune function in environments of nutritional scarcity and high infectious disease load. My current research investigates breast milk nutrient and immune contents transferred to infants by mothers. The patterns of variation in milk contents provide insights for understanding the plasticity of human milk and maternal strategy for milk synthesis in response to nutritional/disease stress. My studies tend to utilize probabilistic samples of mother-infant dyads from community settings, ethnographic methods for socioeconomic, demographic, and behavioral-cultural variables, biochemical markers of nutrition and immunity assessed in blood/milk samples, statistical modeling and hypothesis testing. My lab, the Biomarker Laboratory for Anthropological Research, is one of the MSU’s BSL Level-2 labs certified for research with human biological specimens. My long-term goal is to clarify, through basic research, why some public health problems, such as anemia and vitamin A deficiency, are so pervasive and persistent in some environments, despite intense intervention efforts by governments and other initiatives.

Breast milk lactoferrin variation in relation to maternal anemia, micronutrient deficiency, and inflammation among Ariaal agropastoralists in northern Kenya.

Human milk folate-binding protein in relation to maternal micronutrient health during the 2006 Horn-of-Africa drought.

Conditional sex bias in human milk fat as a function of maternal nutrition and infant feeding behavior in the gendered context of northern Kenya.