Individual Members
Jim Kaput, PhD, is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Vydiant, a Wisconsin-based precision health company developing “healthware:" an evidence-based knowledge system that connects lifestyle factors with health outcomes and digital tools that deliver holistic, personalized guidance. Vydiant is also developing PathWise, a precision genetics platform that uses partitioned polygenic risk scores (PRS) to identify the biological pathways contributing to an individual’s disease risk and connect those insights with relevant lifestyle evidence. Throughout his career, Jim has focused on translating complex nutrition, genetics, lifestyle, and health data into practical strategies for improving individual and population health.
Jim earned his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Colorado State University. He subsequently trained as a postdoctoral fellow and served as an assistant professor at Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Günter Blobel, recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
His academic and leadership appointments have included the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where he served on the biochemistry faculty; Northwestern University, where he directed the Biotechnology Laboratory; the University of California, Davis, where he coordinated scientific and administrative activities for a federally funded Center of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics. He also was gave lectures in classes at the University of Lausanne and EPFL in Switzerland.
From 2007 to 2011, Jim directed the Division of Personalized Nutrition and Medicine at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research. His team collaborated with the USDA and community organizations on nutrition and health initiatives, including community-based participatory research in rural Arkansas. From 2011 to 2017, he was a Senior Expert at the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he led clinical translation activities and contributed to international health research, including a community-based micronutrient intervention involving children and adolescents in Brazil.
Jim has played a longstanding leadership role in the international nutrigenomics community. He served for eight years on the Executive Committee of the Nutrigenomics Organization, advised Nutrigenomics New Zealand, and co-founding editor of the scientific journal Genes & Nutrition. Over the past two decades, he has organized or co-organized more than 20 international conferences and workshops and delivered more than 200 invited presentations in over 60 countries.
Individual Member