Travis Masterson is director of the Health, Ingestive Behavior, and Technology lab at Penn State. The goal of this lab is to leverage a variety of unique technologies to measure, understand, and intervene on eating behavior and overall health. His research is primarily centered on understanding and preventing the development of obesity in both children and adults. Masterson’s lab currently uses technology including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), virtual reality (VR), active and passive smartphone tracking, and large-scale online data mining techniques to generate data.
Specific areas of study include measuring brain and behavioral response to food cues, modifying food cue responsivity, and monitoring and understanding consumers in the context of the current food marketing environment. Additionally, Masterson continues to collaborate with colleagues at Dartmouth College on a large NIH funded R01 grant examining the effects of food marketing on children’s brain response and eating behavior and how these responses are related to children’s genetic predisposition for weight gain.
Masterson earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in exercise science with an emphasis in health promotion from Brigham Young University. He completed his Ph.D. in nutritional sciences at The Pennsylvania State University. Most recently, he completed a NIDA T-32 postdoctoral fellowship in the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College studying co-occurring disorders.
Masterson is also an avid hiker, martial artist, snowboarder, reader of fiction, and loves doing all these activities with his wife and two sons.