Lora Heisler is the Chair of Human Nutrition and Director of Research at the Rowett Institute, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where she also leads the Obesity and Food Choice research theme. She is an internationally recognized scientist whose work has made seminal contributions to understanding the neurobiology of energy balance, appetite regulation and glucose homeostasis, with the aim of identifying novel targets for the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Professor Heisler obtained her B.S. from Boston University, an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her PhD from Tufts University in 1997. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco, and at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. In 2001, Heisler joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School, where she established her independent research laboratory. She subsequently relocated her group to the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2004, where she spent the next decade as a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow, developing a strong and internationally recognized research programme in the neurobiology of energy balance. In 2013, her laboratory moved to the Rowett Institute to benefit from the Institute’s comprehensive strengths in obesity research, spanning molecular, physiological, and translational approaches.
Heisler’s research has yielded influential discoveries in brain circuits controlling body weight and glucose regulation. Notably, she has elucidated key mechanisms by which serotonin signaling in the brain can be harnessed for the treatment of obesity and diabetes, including defining how the anti-obesity drug d-fenfluramine exerts its effects and identifying novel serotonin receptor targets with therapeutic potential. Her work exemplifies the successful translation of fundamental neuroscience into clinically relevant strategies.
Lora Heisler’s contributions have been recognized with Outstanding Scientific Achievement Awards from the Obesity Society and the American Diabetes Association, and she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2016. In addition, Professor Heisler has served on multiple journal editorial boards and was appointed Deputy Editor of Molecular Metabolism in 2018.
