The Alexis Wood Lab is involved in the following research areas. See information, related projects, collaborators and funding information for each below.
By the time infants are born, they bring with them a vast amount of knowledge – both innate and learned – about how the world works. During the earliest months of life, infants start the lifelong process of figuring out how they want to interact with the people and objects that make up their world, and what effects their actions will have. Two of our newest projects, the Baylor Infants Twins Study (BITS) and The Baylor Infant Orometer (BIO) Study are designed develop new measures of infant behavior, and use these to understand the development of health behaviors.
Dietary intake is an important component of health. In collaboration with national-level studies, members of our lab use biological data, including information from the metabolome, genome, epigenome, and microbiome to address unanswered questions about how food can reduce disease risk.
While much research has focused on what children eat, how children eat can also have powerful effects on their health. Members of our group are looking at why children eat as they do in order to devise programs which help children develop eating behaviors that best support healthy development.
Our lab offers statistical support through consultation, teaching and formal analysis to a variety of projects related to health.