• Initial, quarterly, annual, and significant change assessments• Led weekly weight committee meetings • Monthly communication with dialysis clinic dietitians• Close collaboration with nursing and MD in review of monthly labs and adherence to diet order• Analysis of cycle menus • Monthly in-services to kitchen staff; in-services to nursing staff • Monthly tube feed, renal and wound notes• Monthly and quarterly QA presentations—reduction of weight losses; tray accuracy; improving channels of communication amongst department to improve efficiency of service; resident satisfaction• Participation in weekly wound rounds• Educationed residents, staff and families—DM, heart health, kidney disease, GI diseases and food-drug interactions• Daily meal-round observations and tray assessments, weekly inspection of kitchen safety• Visual EMR, Minimum Data Set (MDS) Sections K, V, CAA: oral/nutrition status, dehydration, tube feed

Clinical Rotation at Staten Island University Hospital• Consulted patients with diabetes, renal, cancer, nutrition support, other conditions• 3-day calorie counting• diet education and planning for diabetes, renal patients• discussed dietary management of health conditions with nurses, speech-language pathologists, social workers, and physicians• extensively utilized McKesson electronic medical records systemDepartment Management at Staten Island University Hospital South• Performance Improvement Project on reduction of food waste caused by overproduction of meals• Business Plan analysis and recommendation involving the "Yogurt Machine"​• In-Service Education Project on reducing the incidence of slips/falls and cuts in the kitchen area. Community Service Project• Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey--program designed along with group members to offer the participants an "Eating for Beauty" badge• Created and carried out a cooking demonstration and a hand-on activityWIC • Conducted a complete nutrition assessment, determined nutritional risk status• Provided participant-centered nutrition and health education and high-risk counseling• Determined and assigned food packages/infant formulas for the participantsShop-Rite Supermarket

In addition to having a sweet taste, sugars have a postingestive reinforcing effect which stimulates appetite. I studied the relative potency of various sugars--ie glucose, fructose, galactose and sucrose in promoting appetite when infused directly into the gut. While the glucose has a much weaker sweet taste than does fructose, its postingestive effects are much more potent than are those of fructose. In addition to stimulating appetite, glucose also conditions strong flavor preferences. I conducted the experiments, conducted statistical analyses, and published on this topic.

Dissertation Title: Carbohydrate-induced orosensation, appetition, and conditioned flavor preference in the wildtype and knockout mouse strainsStudied taste discrimination abilities in animals lacking an ability to taste sweets. Despite not tasting the sugars initially, they learned to prefer them after extensive experience. This preference was conditioned by postingestive reinforcing effects of the sugars. On the other hand, these same animals never learned to prefer the artificial sweeteners.Prepared stable oil emulsions using a microfluidizer with various combinations of emulsifiers and oilsAnalyzed body weight gain in animals on various sugar and fat diet regimens.Performed statistical analysis of data using SPSS, Statistica, and Crunch softwares

Conducted studies examining how drugs (D1 dopamine antagonists) change the feeding response of animals to fats and sugars. Collected data documenting how these drugs disrupt conditioned flavor preferences.