Brooks Leitner, PhD

Brooks Leitner attended the University of Maryland, College Park, where he earned his bachelor's degree in Kinesiology, with Honors in 2015. There, he earned undergraduate researcher of the year in 2015 for his work on the effects of exercise on brain function in Dr. J. Carson Smith's lab. He moved on to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD for a Postbaccalaureate position in the Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Obesity branch of the NIDDK. There, he studied human brown adipose tissue anatomy and function, and its role in human energy metabolism in the labs of Drs. Kong Chen and Aaron Cypess. Brooks enrolled in Yale's MD/PhD Program in 2018, and completed his PhD in Cellular & Molecular Physiology in 2022 in the lab of Dr. Rachel J. Perry, investigating the intersection of metabolic fitness and cancer and sepsis.