Dr. Steven Abood

Dr. Steven Abood holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Florida International University, a law degree from Emory University School of Law, and an undergraduate degree from Emory University in Psychology and Political Science. He has been interested in futurism and bioethics ever since he conducted an independent study project during law school on the liberty rights and legal implications of genetic and biomechanical enhancement. This interest has extended to various biological and psychological issues surrounding the Mars mission, which he has published recent papers on, along with an international team of co-authors. Steven conducts basic and applied research on signaling pathways by applying compounds extracted from natural products to various cell lines in the laboratory of Dr. M. Alejandro Barbieri. He has recently published papers on the effects of compounds he extracted from rare plants he collected in the mountains of Argentina on adipogenesis, with applications for the treatment of diabetes, obesity, and for maintaining the fat stores needed to carry a pregnancy to term on terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. His work also sheds more light on how the fundamental process of adipogenesis works. He has also presented at conferences on the evolutionary biology of obesity, and mismatch paradigms, which refer to disconnects between the environments in which our genes developed, and the environments in which we currently find ourselves, with implications for the genetic mismatches of space travel away from our terrestrial home. Before returning to graduate school to pursue his Ph.D., Steven worked for Emory University’s Chemistry department and for the law firm of King & Spalding on patent issues for pharmaceutical compounds and other scientific inventions. He is currently finishing a book entitled Bloated: How we got fat and what you can do about it, which discusses the mismatch between the environment in which our fat genes developed and our modern one; a mismatch which has led to more people being obese than undernourished for the first time in human history. In his free time he teaches a women’s self defense course at Florida International University called Invincible Woman Self Defense, and is launching a fundraiser called The Invincible Woman Project to spread the course to as many universities as possible. The course includes the latest psychological methods of prevention and survival based on published research, as well as martial arts such as jiujitsu, which he has studied for decades in the U.S., and in Japan, and has taught to police departments, the U.S. Army, and members of the U.S. Navy SEALS and FBI.