Freudenheim Named Department Chair

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Jo L. Freudenheim, Ph.D., has been named chair of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo following a national search.

Freudenheim joined the department as an assistant professor after serving as a postdoctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology at UB from 1987-88. She was named a professor in 1998 and has served as interim department chair since 2003. As chair she will concentrate on expanding the department's research program, hiring new faculty and developing the epidemiology teaching program.

Her research focuses on the epidemiology of nutrition and cancer the relationship between diet and breast cancer, in particular.

She holds concurrent appointments as professor in Roswell Park Cancer Institute's Department of Cancer Pathology and Prevention and as research scientist with the UB site of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis.

She also has appointments at UB's Research Institute on Addictions and in the UB Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences.

Freudenheim currently is principal investigator on a $2.39 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to investigate methylation and oxidation in breast-cancer epidemiology. She also is the principal investigator on a project examining the mechanism underlying the observed association of alcohol consumption with breast-cancer risk. The project is part of a larger study based in the Breast Cancer Center of Excellence at Georgetown University.

Freudenheim received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, holds master's degrees in nutritional sciences and preventive medicine from the University of Wisconsin, and earned a doctorate in nutritional sciences from Wisconsin in 1986.

She is an author or co-author on more than 150 publications in refereed journals and is a member of several professional organizations. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the 2005 SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship.

Freudenheim is a resident of Buffalo.