Robert Ward, Ph.D.

Field: Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Sciences
Areas of Focus: Food Chemistry

Expertise

• Food chemistry
• Lipid analysis
• Metabolomics
• Fiber
• Polyunsaturated fatty acids
• Gut health
• Inflammation

Bio

Dr. Robert Ward is an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences at USU. His primary research interest is to characterize the ways in which specific components of foods can affect health and disease processes. For his graduate training at the University of California, Davis was in Food Science and Technology. He has a thorough understanding of the chemistry and biochemistry of foods and the ways in which they interact with the consumer during digestion and metabolism. The main focus of his research program at Utah State involves discovery and characterization of bioactive dietary components. Dr. Ward has been active in developing methods to comprehensively analyze lipids and small molecule metabolites in various matrices, and his laboratory is equipped with a GC-MS and a GC-FID with which these analyses are conducted. His lab has experience in the analysis of fatty acid methyl esters, short chain fatty acids, and monosaccharides as well as other small molecules.