Curiosity turned a dietitian into a lipid scientist

Judy Storch began her career as a clinical dietitian. “I was always interested in food and nutrition,” she said, “but realized that I wanted to understand the scientific underpinnings of what I was telling people to eat.”

Eager to learn more about the science behind her nutrition advice, she pursued a master’s degree. What began as curiosity morphed into a love for bench work and a path to a career in lipid research.

Judy Storch

Now a distinguished professor of nutritional sciences at Rutgers University, Storch enjoys discussing research with her lab members and reading papers about new findings.

“What you see in the textbook is already interesting,” she said, “but fundamental new discoveries are really exciting.”

Storch’s work shows that lipid-binding proteins are multifunctional. “They do more than just bind a lipid,” she said. “They are also important as regulatory molecules and for communication within the cell.”

She is a self-proclaimed reductionist, which drives her passion for understanding protein structure and lipid–protein interactions on multiple levels.

“In my lab, we look at things at the molecular level, the cellular level and the whole-animal level,” she said. “By putting all this together, we try to get a picture of what these proteins are doing within cells.”

Storch said she owes her success to support and excellent mentorship during her training years and as a faculty member.

“I had people who took me seriously as a scientist, and that wasn’t necessarily true for women in labs at the time,” she said.

Looking back, she is grateful for her mentors’ and colleagues’ encouragement and values this for her own trainees.

For her work, Storch will receive the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s Avanti Award in Lipids, which recognizes outstanding research contributions in the area of lipids, at the 2025 ASBMB Annual Meeting, April 12–15 in Chicago.

Storch was surprised to hear she won the award.

“I’m closer to the end of my career than the beginning,” she said, “but it’s nice for my lab to have this recognition that the work that we’re doing is of interest to people.”