Dr. Adelheid (Heidi) Lempradl is an associate professor in the Department of Metabolism and Nutritional Programming at Van Andel Institute. Her research program advances our fundamental understanding of how early life shapes lifelong physiology and disease risk.

Dr. Lempradl uses an integrative approach that combines developmental biology, metabolism, environmental health, genetics and innovative multi-omic technologies. She pioneered a single-embryo multi-omics platform that reveals, at high resolution, how transcriptional and metabolic programs unfold in early embryos and how they are altered by parental diet or environmental exposures. Her work aims to define the molecular mechanisms that mediate intergenerational metabolic effects and to identify pathways that contribute to disease susceptibility.

Dr. Lempradl earned her Ph.D. at the University of Vienna. She completed postdoctoral training at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Austria and the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Germany, where her work contributed to a growing understanding of how environmental exposure can leave molecular imprints that persist beyond a single generation. At VAI, she leads a growing research program and is an active mentor and educator within the Van Andel Institute Graduate School.