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Assistant Professor
The Ohio State University
Dr. Rachel Kopec completed a B.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Business from OSU in 2006, and a Ph.D. in Human Nutrition from OSU in 2012 under Dr. Steven Schwartz. She was an AgreenSkills postdoctoral fellow at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) from 2013-2016. She joined the Human Nutrition Program at Ohio State as an Assistant Professor in 2016. Dr. Kopec’s research group studies fat-soluble vitamin/bioactive interactions that occur during food processing, absorption and metabolism using both model organisms and humans. Her group uses analytical chemistry techniques (specifically targeted and metabolomics liquid chromotography-mass spectrometry) to identify parent bioactives, their resulting metabolites, and their effects on biochemical pathways. Dr. Kopec also collaborates on multi-omic integration projects (LC-MS + NMR, metabolome-microbiome, genome-metabolome data integration) to "make more meaning" from the metabolomics data her team collects. Outside the laboratory, Dr Kopec loves to spend time outdoors! Hiking, rock climbing, and skiing are her preferred activities, but in the flat-lands of Ohio she ends up doing more jogging, biking, and gardening. This past year with COVID19, she got into carpentry and built an outdoor furniture set for the patio with her husband.