ARS Memorial Lectureship Series
Episode 2 – Enhancing the Purpose of Food

The Agricultural Research Service's Memorial Lectureships recognize scientists who have made outstanding contributions to agriculture.

The W.O. Atwater Lecture was established in 1968 to honor the memory of Wilbur Olin Atwater (1844-1907) and to recognize scientists who have made unique contributions toward improving the diet and nutrition of people around the world.

The 2023 W.O. Atwater Memorial Lecturer recipient, Patrick J. Stover, Ph.D., is the director of the Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture (IHA) at Texas A&M AgriLife Research. The IHA is the world’s first research institute to bring together precision nutrition, responsive agriculture, and behavioral research to reduce diet-related chronic disease in a way that considers environmental and economic effects. With support from the United States Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service and the State of Texas, the IHA conducts research that improves linkages between agriculture, food and human health, and includes an embedded USDA-ARS program.

As an international leader in biochemistry, agriculture and nutrition, Stover’s research focuses on the biochemical, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that underlie the relationships between nutrition, food fortification and human pathologies such as developmental anomalies, neuropathies and cancer.