Monica Dus

MONICA DUS is a college professor and the principal investigator of the Laboratory of Molecular Nutrition in LSA. She also serves as the Assistant VP for Research and the Director of the Office of National Labs in the Vice President for Research Office. She is affiliated with the Michigan Neuroscience Institute, the Michigan Obesity and Nutrition Research Center, and the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the Ford School of Public Policy.

Dus is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2023–2024 White House Fellow, and a 2024–2026 NASEM New Voices. She served as a Special Assistant to the 78th Secretary of the Navy and currently serves on the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Vision for American Science & Technology task force (Vastfuture.org), and on the boards of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and on the NIH National Taste and Smell Center. 

Dus is interested in science as an element of national power, and its roles in security, prosperity, and diplomacy. Her life mission is to contribute to strategies, institutions, and organizational structures that meet the innovation demands of the future and renew the social compact between science and society. From 2023 to 2024, she served as Special Assistant (GS-14) to the 78th Secretary of the Navy, where she led the Science, Education, and Force Resiliency portfolios and was recognized with the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award, the second-highest civilian award. In this role, she contributed to the $50 million cross-sector Michigan Maritime Manufacturing program, a multi-agency, cross-sector workforce development initiative that supports the submarine industrial base. She also contributed to the Department of the Navy Science and Technology Strategy and Board, the Naval Education Strategy, the Education for Seapower Advisory Board, and the Navy Integrative Resilience and Mental Health efforts.

At U-M, Dus leads a multidisciplinary, NIH- and NSF-funded laboratory investigating the interplay between food, genes, and physiology. She also teaches Molecular Genetics, Neuroscience, and Science Communication to ~500 undergraduates every year. Beyond the lab and classroom, she engages with the public through writing, podcasts, and community events on topics such as personalized nutrition, genetics, and neuroscience. Dus’ research has been featured in close to 100 academic talks across a dozen countries and highlighted in major media outlets, including NPR, PBS, Bloomberg, Scientific American, Forbes, and Women’s Health. She enjoys writing in the open-access The Conversation, and her trade book is under contract with Simon & Schuster and Penguin UK.

Her scholarly and service work has been recognized with honors such as the President's Award for National and State Leadership, the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award, the NIH New Innovator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Sloan Research Fellowship, the Rita Allen Scholar Award, the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience, the Ajinomoto Young Investigator Award for Gustation Research, the Society for Neurogenetics and Behavior Early Career Award, and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Award.

Dus earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences, where she studied RNA-based gene regulation in the Hannon Lab (NAS/HHMI), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in neurobiology at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at NYU (Suh lab), investigating nutrient sensing mechanisms. She also conducted research at the California Institute of Technology Department of Biology (Benzer lab), the University of Michigan Department of Microbiology and Immunology (Imperiale lab), the Columbia University Department of Human Genetics (Bestor lab), and the University of California Riverside Department of Microbiology (Ding lab).

Visit her lab website to learn more about her and the lab's research, public service, and communication work.