ASPEN is honored to award the 2021 Rhoads Research Lecture to Thomas R. Ziegler, MD, MS. Dr. Ziegler is Professor of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta and Director of the Emory Center for Clinical and Molecular Nutrition. Since 1994, he has served as the Co-Director of the multidisciplinary Emory University Hospital Nutrition and Metabolic Support Service, where he provides inpatient and outpatient nutritional care for adults with intestinal failure, malabsorption, critical illness, and nutritional depletion.
Dr. Ziegler received BS and MS degrees in Nutrition and a MD degree from Michigan State University. After Internal Medicine training in Ann Arbor and Boston, he completed sequential fellowships in Clinical Nutrition and then Endocrinology/Metabolism at Harvard Medical School. His mentor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston was Douglas W. Wilmore, MD, a member of the original team at Penn that developed parenteral nutrition with Dr. Jonathan Rhoads, who was Dr. Wilmore’s mentor. Dr. Ziegler’s work in the Wilmore lab included early clinical studies on gut permeability in burn patients, the anabolic effect of growth hormone in patients requiring parenteral nutrition, the impact of modified individualized diet, with glutamine and growth hormone, in short gut patients, and studies on the safety and efficacy of glutamine-supplemented parenteral nutrition in bone marrow transplantation. At Emory, his internationally recognized research in nutrition and metabolism has been continuously funded by NIH since 1996, and his research has resulted in >220 original manuscripts. He is a standing member of the new NIH Nutrition and Metabolism in Health and Disease (NMHD) Study Section. Dr. Ziegler is an editor of the latest edition of the reference textbook Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease.
Dr. Ziegler has worked closely with Emory Professor Dean P. Jones, PhD to develop a clinical metabolomics research program at Emory and his more recent human studies involve plasma high-resolution metabolomics in clinical cohorts, including patients with tuberculosis, obesity, critical illness, and metabolic bone disease.
Dr. Ziegler has a strong mentoring background in nutrition and metabolism; his K24/NIDDK mentoring grant from 2007-2018 was entitled "Patient-Oriented Research in Clinical Nutrition". He serves as the Program Director of the Emory University Hospital Clinical Research Center. He has served on multiple editorial boards (including JPEN from 1992-2019) and on several NIH grant review panels.
Join your colleagues and learn more from Dr. Ziegler in his lecture on “Nutritional Metabolomics: Back to the Future of Nutrition and Metabolic Support.”
FACULTY
Thomas Ziegler, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipids Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA; Director, Emory Center for Clinical and Molecular Nutrition; Co-Program Director (TL1) Research Education Programs, Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (Georgia CTSA); and Director, Emory University Hospital Clinical Research Center, Georgia CTSA Clinical Research Centers, Atlanta, GA

Thomas Ziegler, MD, MS