Wendy King, PhD

• Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health

Dr. King is an expert in obesity research, particularly with respect to physical activity, substance use and weight regain in the context of bariatric surgery. She also has studied a wide variety of health-related exposures and outcomes as a principal investigator and co-investigator of several data coordinating centers, in which she focuses on the design, coordination and analysis of multi-center trials.

Currently she is a multiple principal investigator of the data coordinating center for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded:

1. Physiology Of the Weight Reduced State (POWERS) consortium, which aims to determine the extent, durability and metabolic and biobehavioral mechanisms for physiologic adaptations to weight loss.
2. Percutaneous Intervention Versus Observational Trial of Arterial ductus in Lower gestational age infants (PIVOTAL), which will inform best practices in the clinical care of patent ductus arteriosus in preterm infants, thereby helping reduce chronic lung disease, intestinal injury, brain damage and congestive heart failure.

Additionally, Dr. King oversees the data management and analysis of the 21-site, industry-funded study, “Understanding the Role of Novel HBV Assays to Improve the Characterization of Acute and Chronic Hepatitis B.” It is an ancillary study to the Hepatitis B Research Network (HBRN), which is comprised of 28 clinical centers, an immunology center, a central laboratory and NIH scientists. She is a co-investigator of the HBRN’s data coordinating center.

Dr. King attended the University of California, San Diego, where she obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in biology. She obtained her doctorate in epidemiology from Pitt Public Health.