Faculty Features: Ryan Cronk and Saame “Raz” Shaikh

Ryan Cronk

Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering

Ryan Cronk, PhD, research director at the Water Institute, focuses on documenting the impacts and sustainability of water, sanitation, hygiene and cleaning interventions on maternity wards and in global health care settings. His team evaluates the holistic benefits of these services for patients and health care workers, conducts impact evaluations to demonstrate their value, and uses implementation science to identify ways to improve service delivery and management.

While still an undergraduate student, Cronk worked on applied research projects in low- and middle-income countries. These formative experiences gave his engineering training purpose and application and confirmed that he wanted to spend his career at the intersection of public health and engineering. In 2015, Cronk led a World Health Organization (WHO) report on water, sanitation and hygiene in health care facilities that shed light on poor conditions worldwide for the first time and launched a new global effort, spearheaded by WHO, UNICEF and dozens of other partners, to improve health care environmental conditions.

Saame “Raz” Shaikh

Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition

Carolina has a strong athletics legacy, and the Gillings School takes pride in the success and health of the athletes who participate.

Raz Shaikh, PhD, and his team reflect that passion in their nutrition research. Shaikh is studying key molecules derived from dietary fats that are critical for controlling inflammation and supporting athletic performance. Inflammation develops during the course of physical activity or injury and is tightly regulated by certain dietary fat sources which are often depleted in athletes. Shaikh is applying a range of analytical methods to build a precision nutrition framework for resolving inflammation in female collegiate athletes and developing individualized nutrition recommendations to improve their recovery and performance.

For all athletes, performance is highly influenced by the intake of differing macro- and micro-nutrients. But female athletes have particularly unique nutritional requirements and can be prone to deficiencies in a wide range of nutrients. In the future, Shaikh’s team aims to expand their approach to provide recommendations based on other physiological adaptations in athletes, like muscle protein synthesis and metabolic flexibility.