Professor Maret Traber is one of two Oregon State University researchers among the group of 2021 fellows announced by the American Society for Nutrition Foundation.
Maret, a CPHHS researcher and the Ava Helen Pauling Professor at OSU’s Linus Pauling Institute, conducts research that focuses on the function of vitamin E in human health. She has developed ways to evaluate vitamin E status in people using stable isotopes and her work has shed light on key mechanisms for the regulation of vitamin E bioavailability, transport and antioxidant activity.
Maret developed, in collaboration with the Robyn Tanguay group at OSU’s Sinnhuber Aquatic Research Laboratory, a vitamin E deficient zebrafish embryo model that showed vitamin E is critical for forming the brain and spinal cord.
Maret was a member of the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine panel that published the daily recommended intake report in 2000 on vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium and the carotenoids, is on the editorial board of the Journal of Nutrition and has been a principal investigator on various National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Agriculture-sponsored research projects. She received undergraduate and graduate degrees in nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley.
The class of 14 fellows also includes Neil Shay, professor of food science and technology in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences, and Helmut Sies of Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. Sies, a pioneer in the study of carotenoids and flavonoids, is a past winner of the Linus Pauling Institute Prize for Health Research. Shay’s research has focused on understanding how specific food components – for example, polyphenols from fruits such as red raspberries, cherries and grapes, and omega-three fats from walnuts – can contribute to good health and improved metabolic function.
The 2021 fellows will be recognized at a virtual ceremony in June.
This story is adapted from a Life @ OSU article by Steve Lundeberg.