Christopher B. Newgard, PhD, is Founding Director of the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute. He is also the Director of the Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center and the W. David and Sarah W. Stedman Distinguished Professor, with faculty appointments in the Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and Medicine Departments. Prior to coming to Duke in 2002, Dr. Newgard was the Gifford O. Touchstone Jr. and Randolph G. Touchstone Distinguished Professor, Department of Biochemistry, and Co-Director of the Touchstone Center for Diabetes Research, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. Dr. Newgard's research focuses on application of an interdisciplinary approach to gain mechanistic understanding of complex cardiometabolic diseases. This interdisciplinary approach includes gene discovery, metabolic engineering, and comprehensive tools of metabolic analysis ("metabolomics") such as mass spectrometry-based metabolic profiling.