Heath G. Gasier, LCDR

Heath G. Gasier, LCDR, MSC, USN is a Research Physiologist assigned to the Department of Military and Emergency Medicine as an Assistant Professor. He enlisted in the U. S. Navy in 1991 and served onboard the USS Denver (LPD-9) as an Operations Specialist, deploying to Mogadishu, Somalia in support of Operation Restore Hope. Upon leaving active duty, he earned a B.S. in Nutrition from Youngstown State University (2000), completed a Dietetic Internship from University Hospitals of Cleveland (2001), and earned a M.S. in Nutrition from Case Western Reserve University (2002) while serving in the Ohio U. S. Army National Guard as a Construction Equipment Repairer. Following graduate school, he was commissioned as a 2nd Lt. in the U. S. Air Force and assigned to Wilford Hall Medical Center, Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, TX as a Registered Dietitian (2002). In 2005 he left active duty to pursue his Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology, earning his degree in 2009 from Texas A&M University prior to receiving a commission as a LT in the U. S. Navy. His was first assigned to the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory, Groton, CT where he examined the effects of prolonged submergence on skeletal health and obesity, and the role of nitric oxide in regulation of physiological responses to diving and performing work at high altitude. In 2013, he was reassigned to Duke University Medical Center, Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology as a Research Scholar, completing a fellowship in Environmental Physiology (2015) under Dr. Claude Piantadosi and Dr. Ivan Demchenko. His research was aimed at understanding the physiological and biochemical effects of metabolic gasses on the central nervous system under hyperbaric hyperoxic conditions.