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PhD Graduate Student
Florida International University
Priscilla Clayton is a McNair Doctoral Fellow at Florida International University and works under the mentorship of Dr. Cristina Palacios. Her research interests lie in early childhood nutrition and development, obesity prevention, health and disease amongst underrepresented populations, and global nutrition. Priscilla's dissertation explored the association between hydration, body fat percentage, fat-free mass, and bone mass in children and adolescents (10-20 years). She has developed protocols for urinary analytes, fecal, and blood specimen collection for Dr. Cristina Palacios’ NIH-funded MetA-Bone clinical trial (1R01HD098589-01). Priscilla and the MetA-Bone Trial published two systematic reviews related to the recruitment of participants to aid in establishing new potential recruitment strategies. Priscilla published the first systematic review as a first author in ‘Obesity Reviews’ (impact factor: 8.5) and was awarded FIU's Robert Stempel College Publication Award and a Robert Stempel Oral Presentation Award. She was a co-author of the other published in the ‘American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ (impact factor: 6.7). She has also received a pediatric nutrition certification from FIU’s Dietetics and Nutrition Department and obtained a phlebotomy certificate. Priscilla has also previously worked for the NIH-funded Miami Adult Studies on HIV (MASH) Cohort (1U01DA040381) under Dr. Marianna K Baum, which aimed to follow HIV, Hepatitis C Virus, HIV/HCV co-infected participants to explore relationships associated with drug abuse, infection, and liver function over time. Priscilla is currently in the last semester of her Ph.D. program and hopes to obtain a Post-doctoral Fellowship with the National Institute of Health’s Child Health and Human Development’s Epidemiology Branch to grow as a future investigator and serve as a mentor to others in the field.