Kenneth Houser, MS, BS
Research Project Manager, Center for Research on Tobacco and Health
Biography
Kenneth Houser is a research project manager for the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine.
He is the current TCORS administrative core manager. In this role, he is tasked with facilitating the timeframes outlined in each of the individual proposals, including IRB approvals, scientific review committee approvals, hiring of staff, purchasing laboratory equipment and supplies, developing databases, establishing lines of communication and liaisons with appropriate contacts for NIH and FDA officials.
He has been involved in human subjects research since 2017 and basic science research since 2008. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry with honors from Lebanon Valley College and his master’s degree in chemical biology from Penn State.
TCORS
Tobacco Center of Regulatory Sciences
Penn State College of Medicine received a five-year, $20 million federal grant to investigate the harmful effects of alternative tobacco products, research that will help with better regulation and improve public health. The Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS) award will fund a trio of studies, led by the College’s Center for Research on Tobacco and Health, that explore how the design of alternative tobacco products can affect their toxicity and addictiveness. “Our center is unique in that we are addressing both the chemical toxicity of tobacco products (the part that causes harms directly to the human body), and the addictiveness of tobacco products (the characteristic that results in people using tobacco products for decades rather than a few months or years),” said Jonathan Foulds, PhD, one of the principle investigators. “It is the combination of these two factors that determines the overall health effects.”