Juan Loor received a bachelor in Animal Science (1995) from the University of California, Davis. He then moved to Virginia Tech for the MS (1997) and PhD (2001) to study aspects of lipid metabolism in ruminants. Since joining the faculty of the University of Illinois in Fall 2005, his research program has focused on nutritional and physiological genomics during lactation and growth in beef and dairy cattle. His laboratory draws on in vitro cell and tissue culture and live animals as models to uncover regulatory mechanisms associated with nutrient effects on tissue development and function. Transcriptomics, metabolomics, and bioinformatics are some of the tools used in his laboratory in an effort to apply Systems Physiology.