Luke Olsen, Ph.D.

Luke Olsen is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Cohen at the Rockefeller University. He holds a B.S. in health promotion from Emporia State University, an M.S. in exercise physiology from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in cell biology and physiology from the University of Kansas Medical Center.

During his Ph.D. studies, Luke leveraged the cave-dwelling species Astyanax mexicanus to explore how cave colonization rewires cellular metabolism. Using multi-omic and genetic engineering approaches, he revealed cavefish preferentially rely on carbohydrate metabolism through direct changes to their skeletal muscle phosphoproteome. As a postdoctoral researcher, he investigates the extremes of mammalian thermogenesis by studying brown adipose tissue within multiple hibernating animals. This work uses comparative genomics of adipose tissue collected across the hibernating season from three obligate hibernating species. Luke anticipates this work will uncover fundamental principles governing mammalian thermogenesis.