Professor
Ohio State University
Dr. Volek is a registered dietitian and professor in the Department of Human Sciences at OSU. He received a B.S. in dietetics from Michigan State University, and MS in exercise physiology and PhD in kinesiology from Penn State University. His translational research includes 330 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 5 books with an H-index over 100. The Volek Lab is focused on the basic and applied human responses to dietary carbohydrate restriction and nutritional ketosis and is recognized as a global thought leader advancing the art and science of ketogenic diets. He has published seminal research demonstrating that nutritional ketosis results in rapid and sustained reversal of metabolic syndrome/prediabetes and type-2 diabetes, a concept he helped scale into a successful digital health technology company as co-founder of Virta Health that has reversed diabetes in thousands of patients. His research has explored a wide variety of therapeutic (cancer, heart failure) and performance (World class endurance athletes) applications including mechanistic studies aimed at elucidating the pleiotropic nature of ketogenic diets with recent focus on ketones as both an alternative fuel and signaling molecule. His presentation will review basic aspects of ketogenic diets, physiological adaptations to nutritional ketosis, and highlight emerging clinical applications plus their potential to augment human performance and resilience.