Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, Ph.D.

Janice Kiecolt-Glaser holds the S. Robert Davis Chair of Medicine in The Ohio State University College of Medicine; she is also Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, and Director of the Division of Health Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, as well as a member of the OSU Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research. Working in the area of psychoneuroimmunology, she has authored  more than 190 articles, chapters, and books, most in collaboration with Dr. Ronald Glaser.  Their studies have demonstrated important health consequences of stress, including slower wound healing and impaired vaccine responses in older adults; they have also shown that chronic stress substantially accelerates age-related changes in IL-6, a cytokine that has been linked to some cancers, cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, and frailty and function decline.  In addition, their programmatic work has focused on the ways in which personal relationships influence immune and endocrine function, and health. Her current studies address questions such as the psychological and physiological consequences of chronic stress in older adults, the ability of omega-3 supplementation to alter mood and inflammation, how genetic and environmental influences contribute to depression and immune dysregulation in older adults, the impact of major life stressors on the progression of basal cell carcinoma, the ability of mind-body interventions such as yoga to modulate endocrine and immune responses, and the role that proinflammatory cytokines play in combination with depression among cancer survivors who experience debilitating fatigue. 

Most notable among her honors is her membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences [Press Release].  In addition, she is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science [Press Release], as well as the American Psychological Association; she received an Award for Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology from the American Psychological Association's Division of Health Psychology, as well as the Developmental Health Psychology Award from the Divisions of Health Psychology and Adult Development and Aging. She is the past President of the Division of Health Psychology. The Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society gave her the Norman Cousins Award in 1998.  She is listed in the Institute for Scientific Information ISIHighlyCited.com (among the world's most highly cited authors, a group comprising less than one half of one percent of all publishing researchers). She has served on the NIMH Mental Health and AIDS study section, as well as the editorial boards of 10 professional journals including the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Psychosomatic Medicine, and Health Psychology.  Her research has been supported by a series of grants from the National Institutes of Health, including a MERIT award, as well as a Research Career Development Award, and she is currently a PI on NIH grants from the NCI, NIA, and NCCAM.  Her first mystery novel, Detecting Lies, was published by Avon in 1997, and her second, Unconscious Truths, in 1998.