Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, FASN, and Zeynep Madak-Erdogan, PhD, received the Mary Swartz Rose Senior Investigator Award and the Mary Swartz Rose Young Investigator Award, respectively, at the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting held in conjunction with Experimental Biology 2016 in San Diego, CA.
The Mary Swartz Rose awards are jointly presented by ASN and the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), and are awarded to recognize outstanding research in the field of bioactive compounds for human health.

“There is no doubt that Dr. Blumberg is among the most highly respected and visible scientists to study the safety and efficacy of bioactive compounds, and with more than two decades of research in the field, his impact extends worldwide. We are so pleased to see his work recognized by an organization as prestigious as ASN,” said Andrea Wong, PhD, vice president, scientific and regulatory affairs, CRN. “Although Dr. Madak-Erdogan is newer to the field of bioactive compound research, her work shows great promise and she will no doubt continue to make important contributions in this area. We look forward to hearing more from her. We started providing these awards nearly a decade ago and we’re very proud to support ASN with grants that help advance the field of nutritional science.”

Dr. Blumberg, a professor in the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and a senior scientist in the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, has spent over twenty years researching the role of antioxidant nutrients and other bioactive compounds in promoting health and preventing disease during the aging process. He has published more than 300 scientific articles and serves on the editor boards of several scientific journals. He participates in activities relevant to incorporating sound nutrition science into public health policy. In addition, Dr. Blumberg has long been inspiring and mentoring young scientists to pursue their own studies on bioactives. 

Dr. Madak-Erdogan, director of Women’s Health, Hormones and Nutrition Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, focuses on how nutrients and hormones impact women’s health, in normal as well as diseased physiological states like breast cancer, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Madak-Erdogan’s work has been published in top tier journals such as Molecular Systems Biology, Journal of American Chemical Society, Molecular and Cellular Biology and Molecular Endocrinology.

The awards are named in honor of the late Mary Swartz Rose (1874-1941), founder and president of what was then the American Institute of Nutrition (now ASN). The Mary Swartz Rose Senior Investigator Award is given to an investigator with 10 years or more of postgraduate training, for outstanding preclinical and/or clinical research on the safety and efficacy of dietary supplements as well as essential nutrients and other bioactive food components that may be distributed as supplements or functional food components. The Mary Swartz Rose Young Investigator Award is based on the same qualifications but is given to an investigator with 10 years or less of postgraduate training.

The Mary Swartz Rose awards were first presented in 2008 and have been supported annually by CRN ever since. CRN’s commitment as an awards partner has helped support ASN in recognizing the best and brightest minds in the field. For more information about the Mary Swartz Rose awards and other award winners, visit ASN’s website.