Tanja Kral has been named the Ellen and Robert Kapito Endowed Professor in Nursing Science and Jianghong Liu has been named the Marjorie O. Rendell Endowed Professor in Healthy Transitions, effective September 1, 2020.

Dr. Kral is professor of nutrition science and associate program director of the Graduate Nutrition Certificate, with a secondary appointment as professor in the department of psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine. One of many multi-disciplinary faculty in the Penn Nursing family, she is a nutrition scientist with training in the study of human ingestive behavior. Her research focuses on the cognitive, sensory, and nutritional controls of appetite and eating in children and adults and their relevance to obesity. In predominantly minority children from low-resource environments, Dr. Kral studies protective factors within families for mitigating behavioral and socioeconomic risk factors for obesity development.

Dr. Kral has a strong record of funding and publication. Currently, she is chair of the PhD Progressions Committee and Chair-Elect of the Graduate Group. She is the recipient of the Alan Epstein Research Award from the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the executive editor of Appetite journal; and recipient of the Dean’s Award for Undergraduate Scholarly Mentorship from Penn’s School of Nursing. She is an associate fellow of the Center for Public Health Initiatives and a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Network.

Dr. Liu is professor of nursing, co-director of the Global Health Minor at Penn Nursing, and the Associate Editor of Research in Nursing and Health. She uses her training in maternal-child nursing, environmental health, and psychology to explore early health factors that affect children and adolescent’s cognitive and emotional/behavioral development. Her research integrates population-based epidemiological analyses with laboratory tests of cognition and psychophysiology to understand the mechanisms driving behaviors and emotions. As director of the NIH-funded China Jintan Child Health Project, Dr. Liu is following more than 1,000 children in Jintan city, China from pre-school into adolescence to understand the influence of exposure to environmental lead, nutrition, and psychosocial factors on their behavior.  She mentors and advises doctoral, graduate, and undergraduate nursing students as well as students studying across multiple majors, including medicine, public health, education, business, engineering, and visiting scholars from China.

Dr. Liu has been widely funded and published. Career highlights include recipient of the NIH Independent Scientist Award and, from Penn, the Trustees Council of Penn Women Award for Undergraduate Advising, the Dean’s Teaching Award for Undergraduate Scholarly Mentorship, and the Barbara J. Lowery Doctoral Student Organization (DSO) Faculty Award for Mentorship. She is a senior fellow at both the Penn Center for Public Health initiatives and the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program.