Research Leader
USDA-ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center
Charles B. Stephensen, Ph.D., is Research Leader of the Immunity and Disease Prevention Research Unit at the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Center in Davis, Ca and an Adjunct Professor of Nutrition at the University of California, Davis. He has a longstanding interest in research on the effects of nutrition on immune function, with a particular focus on vitamin A, vitamin D, and the intestinal microbiome. Dr. Stephensen obtained and M.S. in Human Nutrition at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, a Ph.D. in Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow in Virology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Stephensen was an Associate Professor in the Department of International Health, School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham before moving to the USDA.