Dr. Molly Bray, Ph.D
Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham
"Energy Balance: Timing is Everything"

Dr. Molly Bray is a nationally recognized expert and a featured speaker on the genetics of obesity, energy balance, and exercise response. She is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, with a master’s degree in Exercise Physiology and a PhD in Human and Molecular Genetics. She also serves as the Director of the Genomics Core Laboratory within the Heflin Center for Genomic Sciences at UAB. Dr. Bray’s research focuses on the relationship between energy balance and lifestyle factors such as exercise, nutrition, and circadian patterns of behavior. Her fascinating recent findings related to how the timing and quality of energy intake affect weight gain and metabolic health have been featured on national and international news programs and a myriad of websites and popular news media. Dr. Bray also currently leads one of the largest genetic studies of exercise adherence established to date, the Training Interventions and Genetics of Exercise Response (TIGER) study, with a total planned cohort of more than 5,000 individuals. Dr. Bray's research has included investigations of aerobic fitness and resting and exercise energy expenditure in children and adolescents, circadian studies of feeding and metabolic response, and clinical studies of morbidly obese adolescents undergoing bariatric surgery. Dr. Bray has published over 100 scientific articles in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals and her work has been featured at multiple national and international scientific meetings.