Shana Adise, PhD

Dr. Adise is an Investigator in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Assistant Professor of Research Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She received her bachelor’s in science in psychology, with a cognitive neuroscience emphasis, from the City College of New York, where she was also a recipient of the prestigious City College Fellowship. Dr. Adise received her PhD in nutritional sciences from Penn State University under the direction of Dr. Kathleen L. Keller. While at Penn State, Dr. Adise was a fellow in the USDA Childhood Obesity Prevention Training (COPT) program. Her dissertation studies were among the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study how the brain responds to food and whether this was related to how much children ate. Dr. Adise completed her first postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Vermont under the direction of Hugh Garavan, which focused on skills necessary for utilizing big data (e.g., computational modeling) and novel structural MRI preprocessing techniques. She completed her second postdoctoral fellowship at CHLA, under the direction of Elizabeth Sowell, where she gained training in the field of neurocognitive development.

Over the past decade, Dr. Adise's research has focused on understanding the mechanisms that cause some children to overeat and develop obesity. Additionally, she is also interested in understanding the clinical implications of weight gain on neurocognitive development. Her work uses the combination of MRI, computational modeling and nutrition assessments to understand the relationship between weight gain, the brain and food intake during critical times in development, such as late childhood and early adolescence. Dr. Adise is also interested in understanding how social determinants of health may impact obesity risk and brain development amongst Latino populations. Dr. Adise’s research is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Adise is also a Co-Investigator on the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study at CHLA. The ABCD Study is a 21-site consortium study funded by the NIH. The focus is to understand how adolescent brain develops over time, with a particular focus on neurocognitive development. To learn more about the ABCD study, visit www.ABCDStudy.org.

Beyond her research accomplishments, Dr. Adise is an enthusiastic educator and mentor. Her dedication to teaching and mentorship was recognized by Penn State in 2016, when she was the recipient of the best graduate student teacher and mentoring award.