The University of North Carolina at Greensboro has hired Wei Jia, Ph.D., a leading scientist studying herbal and traditional Chinese medicines, to be co-director of the university's new nutrition research endeavor at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis.
Jia is joining the UNCG Department of Nutrition faculty from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where he was a professor of natural medicines and vice dean of the university's pharmacy school. He also was a principal investigator at that university's Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine, which focuses on drug discovery and development from herbal medicines and traditional Chinese medicine.
Debbie Kipp, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Nutrition, is the other co-director of the UNCG Center for Research Excellence in Bioactive Food Components in Kannapolis.
Jia's research focuses on the identification and characterization of bioactive components from natural products and traditional Chinese medicine that can affect common metabolic diseases such as diabetes. Since 2003, he has received more than $6 million research grants.