Focus
Gut microbiome, diet and nutrition, cardiometabolic risk factors
Biography
Sabrina Sales Martinez is an associate professor in the Department of Dietetics & Nutrition and a registered dietitian/nutritionist. She currently is teaching the Fundamentals of Food and Food Science courses at the undergraduate level and Nutritional Assessment at the graduate level.
Sales Martinez is investigating how modifiable and cardiometabolic risk factors in populations living in South Florida may affect the intestinal microbiome, risks for chronic conditions and health outcomes. She is also an investigator with the FIU-Research Center in Minority Institutions (FIU-RCMI) and a multiple PI on an R01 equivalent grant through the FIU-RCMI examining gut health, cognition, sleep, and stress in Hispanic/Latino adults at risk for Alzheimer’s disease (Tri-Sleep Study).
Sales Martinez is PI on a grant examining associations between total and type of dairy intake and cardiometabolic risk factors. In addition, she is examining the relationship between cardiometabolic risk factors and the intestinal microbiome in young adults. She also contributed to systematic reviews of literature used to establish the World Health Organization’s infant feeding guidelines for global areas experiencing emerging infectious diseases.
She participated in FIU’s Embrace program since 2018, a three-year, inclusive, post-secondary education program for students with developmental disabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disabilities.
She created the FIU Embrace Health Through Cooking seminars that encourage FIU Embrace students to adopt healthy lifestyles by providing them with educational and experiential opportunities to learn basic nutrition, food safety, food selection and food preparation skills for independent living. She is an active member of the American Society for Nutrition.
Lab
The Dietetics and Nutrition Food Lab
Sales Martinez oversees the Food Lab located in AHC-5 133, which includes seven fully equipped kitchens used to instruct courses such as FOS 3021 Fundamentals of Food and FOS 4041 Food Science. Sensory and objective evaluations take place in the food lab for experiments conducted within the courses. The food lab also provides composting materials to the FIU Organic Garden, such as eggshells and raw fruit and vegetable scraps.