Laurie Wideman
BSc Biology ‘90
Professor, University of North Carolina
Greensboro, NC
Laurie Wideman, Ph.D., is the Safrit-Ennis Distinguished Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at UNC Greensboro. She is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine and was inducted as a fellow into the prestigious National Academy of Kinesiology in 2023 (Fellow #642). Dr. Wideman is heavily involved in interdisciplinary research focused on cardiometabolic risk development across the lifespan, with particular focus on longitudinal cohort studies investigating individual and familial factors influencing weight gain and obesity from childhood into early adulthood. She also studies exercise-induced changes in hormones of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis as indicators of health and wellness. Her collaborative work in these areas has produced over 120 published manuscripts and has been consistently funded by multiple divisions of the National Institute of Health (NIH) for almost twenty years.
Dr. Wideman is passionate about mentoring the next generation of scientists. Being a first-generation college student herself, she is especially enthusiastic about providing students the chance to engage in research, with the hope of sparking a passion for science. She has provided research-related mentoring to undergraduate and graduate students, acting as the primary mentor to over 45 students and contributing guidance to another 55 students. She has also mentored numerous post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty, many of whom are women or minorities in science.
Dr. Wideman has over a decade of experience in research compliance, including 10 years as the Chair of the Institutional Review Board for the protection of human subjects in research. She regularly teaches topics related to the NIH responsible conduct of research curriculum and helped design and initiate these lectures at UNC Greensboro. She is currently co-director of the Office of Research Integrity, where she helps oversee compliance in human, animal, and cell-based research.