Dr. Nipun Saini, an Assistant Professor of Nutrition at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute and Department of Nutrition, is working on understanding the metabolic adaptations that occur in the mother and fetus to support a healthy pregnancy, and how maladaptation to stressors such as alcohol, malnutrition, obesity, and diabetes impairs fetal growth and brain development. She currently focuses her expertise on understanding the changes in the macronutrient (glucose and lipids) utilization in maternal-fetal dyad in alcohol-exposed pregnancies and the consequences of this disruption on fetal outcomes, and long-term offspring health. Alcohol’s impact on maternal metabolism and its contribution to impaired fetal development is a neglected area in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) research. Her research fills this gap and creates a niche in an important area of prenatal research wherein maternal metabolism is a driver and contributes to fetal growth impairments which predict cognitive deficits in FASD. Her work is supported by the K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). She was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute. In 2022, she was awarded the Postdoctoral Award for Research Excellence (PARE) by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, UNC Chapel Hill for her work.