SHAHLA
Board Member
Dr. Shahla Ray served as a full time faculty member at Indiana University, Bloomington campus till January 2017. She is currently serving as an adjunct at the same institute and lives in Maryville Tennessee. She holds a PhD degree in Biochemistry. She has conducted post-doctoral research for two years in the Medical Sciences Program, School of Medicine at Indiana University. Over the past years, she has been active in teaching, service and community outreach during her employment at Indiana University, School of Public Health. She has been interested in nutrition education and obesity prevention since 2003. She has produced multiple publications and has edited several books related to food, exercise science and healthy living, children’s educational books and have authored teaching book chapters. Her major publication is a teaching text book entitled, “Obesity and Health, An interactive and Integrated Approach”.
Serving the community and promoting health has been one of Dr. Ray’s passions for the last several years. She developed projects to promote healthy eating and obesity prevention among elementary school age children, underprivileged women and people with intellectual disability. She has worked with several different community agencies to promote health via workshops involving students at Indiana University. She applied and successfully received competitive grants for the above mentioned projects.
She and her family moved to Maryville in August 2016 and started to explore the community and the surrounding area. She began volunteering at Mane Support organization in spring of 2017 and currently is serving as a board member. Both of her daughters, Arianna and Roxanna who are students at Maryville high school, are volunteers. Dr. Ray and her family enjoy volunteering and working with Mane Support family members and horses. Through this wonderful organization, they hope to help children, youth, teens, and adults who have experienced trauma.
In addition, Dr. Ray is a member of a charitable club called “10 dollar club” that helps raise funding for boys and girls club and she volunteer in “Band Booster” at Maryville high school.