Based on more than two decades of focused research and field work, Dr. Mario Grijalva is an internationally recognized expert on the spread of infectious disease and is perhaps the world’s premier expert on Chagas disease, which affects millions of people in South and Central America and has recently spread to the United States and Europe.

Longenecker’s extensive experience as both clinician and educator have given him a strong understanding of the challenges facing physicians who choose to practice in medically underserved rural or urban areas – as well as the best ways to encourage and prepare more physicians-in-training to make this choice.

Dr. Peggy Zoccola specializes in finding the basic mechanisms underlying the relationship between stress and disease. Her current research focuses on understanding how thoughts and emotions may prolong the body’s stress responses and the potential health consequences of this persistent activation. 

Zoccola focuses on this topic of research because she believes that stress is an inevitable part of life.

Originally from the small town of Sligo on the northwest coast of Ireland, Dr. Carroll received his undergraduate degree in Microbiology from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) in 1999 and the same year began his Ph.D. research in the laboratory of Prof. Charles Dorman. For his Ph.D. Carroll studied the regulation of virulence gene expression by nucleoid-associated proteins in Salmonella typhimurium .

In a time when attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children is still not completely understood, Dr. Julie Owens, Ph.D., is working to educate teachers to help affected children succeed in the classroom. Her research provides elementary school teachers with classroom management strategies shown to have a more positive effect on the disruptive behaviors of children with ADHD than traditional counseling practices.

Dr. Jane Balbo also serves as a family practice physician at Campus Care, the student health services program for Ohio University students. Balbo is board certified in Family Practice and Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment, and in Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine and Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine (OMM/NMM).

Dr. Darlene Berryman is an expert on nutrition with a specific focus on how nutrients are processed, metabolized and stored in the body. Her current research is on obesity, with an emphasis on the impact fat tissue has on the body. Fat tissue has been ignored for years because it was commonly regarded as very simple, however, it is a lot more complicated than we thought, Berryman says.

Dr. Bhat has devoted years of research to the disturbing and growing phenomenon of school bullying via electronic means - kids intimidating and harassing each other through the use of cell phones, video and internet social networking sites and blogs. An expert on cyberbullying prevention, Bhat trains school counselors and parents on strategies to proactively address the issue of cyberbullying at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

Franz is a medical sociologist and health services researcher whose research and teaching focus on health disparities, population health, and substance use. She is an associate professor of Community-based Health at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, in Athens, Ohio and Osteopathic Heritage Foundation Ralph S. Licklider, D.O. Endowed Faculty Fellow in Population Health Science.

As dean of the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at Cleveland, which opened in 2015, Dr. Isaac Kirstein is in the forefront of developing a new approach to training physicians as a means to transform health care delivery.