Ana María Arbeláez is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Investigator Track, who received her medical degree from Universidad del Valle in Cali-Colombia. She was a pediatric intern and resident at Saint Louis Children’s Hospital, and a pediatric endocrinology fellow at Washington University. Her mentors have been Philip E. Cryer, MD, and Tamara Hershey, PhD. She was a Harold Amos/ Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Medical Faculty Development Scholar. She obtained a master’s degree in Clinical Investigation from Washington University and currently serves as the Co-Director for the TL1 Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Clinical Research Training program.
Dr. Arbeláez’s area of research has focused on better understanding of the central mechanisms involved in glucose metabolism and counterregulation in humans during glycemic extremes (hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia or malnutrition), creating a novel intersection between the field of clinical neuroscience and endocrinology. Her work has contributed to our understanding of the brain-hormone interactions during the cascade of physiological responses that occur across various levels of hypoglycemia and how these are altered in humans.
More recently, she has been leading a multidisciplinary team of national and international investigators to determine the effects of malnutrition, a state of chronic glucose deprivation, in the developing brain.
In addition, she has been part of multicenter studies such as the TODAY study, Star-3 and DirecNet Study. Her work has been supported by numerous foundations and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She was elected to the Society for Pediatric Research and has been the recipient of different awards including Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.
Aside of her passion for clinical research and patient care, she enjoys fostering child advocacy programs as well as teaching and mentoring trainees.
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