Nutrition

Dr. Saxe, a Preventive Medicine physician and nutritional epidemiologist, is Co-Director of the CIM Natural Healing & Cooking program, Course Director of the UC San Diego online certificate program in Integrative Nutrition, and an international expert in the "food as medicine" movement. His research includes whole-food, plant-based dietary interventions with cancer patients.

A Diplomate in Family Medicine, Dr. Saxe has spent much of his career studying how diet and lifestyle influence the course of chronic disease. As Principal Investigator on an NIH-funded clinical trial, he led pioneering research on diet and stress reduction in men with recurrent prostate cancer — examining whether a whole-food, plant-based diet paired with stress-management practices could slow disease progression, and helping to establish the biological mechanisms by which nutrition acts as a therapeutic tool in oncology.

His scholarship spans integrative oncology, cancer prevention and survivorship, and the role of natural products in immune function, with work appearing in journals including Integrative Cancer Therapies and the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. More recently, he has investigated mushroom-derived natural products as adjuncts to immune response, including a randomized clinical trial of polypore mushroom mycelia alongside COVID-19 vaccination.

Through his teaching and program leadership, Dr. Saxe trains physicians, dietitians, and the broader community in the principles of integrative nutrition — translating decades of research into the kitchen, where so much of health begins.

Hi, I’m Joanne Donoghue, Ph.D., ACSM-CEP, and I serve as the Director of Clinical Research and a Professor at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM). Since joining NYITCOM in 1998, I’ve dedicated my career to advancing clinical research, exercise physiology, nutrition, and human performance—while supporting faculty, clinicians, and trainees in building scholarship that is both impactful and realistic within the demands of academic medicine.

Over the past 27 years, I’ve authored 30+ peer-reviewed publications and delivered 29+ keynote and invited presentations nationally and internationally. I’m especially recognized for my work in esports health and performance, where my research has helped bring global attention to the unique physiological demands, injury risks, and prevention strategies needed to support competitive gamers and emerging digital athletes.

I also understand firsthand the challenges clinicians face in academic research—limited time, competing responsibilities, gaps in training, and the heavy burden of paperwork and administrative tasks that can slow progress at every stage of a project. Because of this, I’ve increasingly focused on integrating artificial intelligence into clinical research, using practical and responsible workflows to help close these gaps. My goal is to make research more efficient and approachable by teaching streamlined strategies for literature synthesis, study design, statistical planning, grant alignment, writing, and dissemination—while maintaining scientific rigor and academic integrity.