New Faculty Member Expands Davis College Nutrition Research - Texas Tech University Departments

Stan is a food scientist and biochemist. Her lab studies how food and microbiome interactions influence cancer development. She joins a Davis College department that's building out its nutrition research bench.

The hire adds a specific angle Lubbock hasn't had much of: precision nutrition, a field that tailors dietary recommendations based on someone's biology rather than generic guidelines. Stan's own words frame the goal directly. She wants her lab to "uncover how food and microbiome interactions influence cancer risk and translate these insights into precision nutrition strategies for preventing pancreatic and breast cancers."

For Tech, that means more federal grant potential and a new research pipeline tied to two cancers with notoriously tough prognoses. Students in Animal & Food Sciences now have a chance to work in nutritional biochemistry and cancer prevention research that didn't exist on campus before. For neighbors in Lubbock, the payoff is slower and less visible, the kind of lab work that could eventually shape prevention guidelines, not tomorrow's headlines.

Pancreatic and breast cancer research now runs through a food science building on a campus better known for cotton and ag research than oncology.