Kathryn Whyte, Ph.D., has been selected as this year's Named New Investigator for the UAB Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC). The center leadership selects from among funded pilot/feasibility recipients and then receives approval from the UAB NORC External Advisory Committee prior to formally making the appointment.
Whyte is an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences, School of Health Professions. She earned her PhD from Columbia University in Behavioral Nutrition and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Obesity Bioenergetics through the NIH T32 postdoctoral program in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. As a postdoctoral fellow, her work focused on whole-body energy expenditure and substrate oxidation phenotyping, building on a research career that began at the whole-room indirect calorimetry laboratory at Mount Sinai Morningside (formerly St. Luke's) in New York.
Since joining UAB in 2025, Whyte has directed the CHAMPS (Chamber-based Assessment of Metabolic PhenotypeS) platform and served as Calorimetry Services director and associate director of the NORC Metabolism Core, working to better understand metabolic flexibility, the body's capacity to shift between carbohydrate and lipid oxidation, as a mechanistic determinant of obesity risk and weight-related outcomes.
The pilot project the Whyte Lab will pursue over the next year, co-funded by the NORC and the UAB Diabetes Research Center (DRC) Pilot and Feasibility Program, is titled “Metabolic Flexibility and Mitochondrial Phenotype During GLP-1 Receptor Agonist–Induced Weight Loss in Adults with Obesity.” Working with Co-Investigator Eric Plaisance, Ph.D., the study will integrate whole-room indirect calorimetry with high-resolution mitochondrial respirometry in peripheral blood mononuclear cells to characterize how individuals differ in their metabolic response to GLP-1 receptor agonist–induced weight loss.
The award will provide financial support for generating the preliminary data needed for a future R01 application continuing this line of research. The mentored aspect of the program will provide valuable perspectives and input from experienced investigators to enhance the impact of the proposed research and better contextualize its significance to nutrition and obesity research.
“I grew up in the NORC world, starting as a research coordinator with the New York NORC many years ago, so this recognition is indescribably meaningful to me,” said Whyte. “Using our new room calorimetry suite as a prism to reveal the mechanistic underpinnings of weight regulation is extremely exciting work, and I am so grateful to get to do this project.”
The Named New Investigator award is an honor created when UAB NORC received its designation as an NIDDK Center in 2001. The award is especially important for an early career scientist, providing $45,000 toward salary and protecting effort dedicated toward their pilot project.
