Heart Health

Originally considering a career as a basketball coach, Jaqueline Freire Machi, Ph.D., found science in her third year of college after getting involved with a physiology laboratory. Now, she’s a research assistant professor in the Charles E. Schmidt College of medicine, fulfilling her passion to understand the role of exercise, diet and heart health.

Currently, Machi works in the lab of Cláudia Rodrigues, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical science, to understand the physiological causes of obesity. “Science must be seen as a contribution to making society better,” she said. “Many diseases can be treated today, and some have been practically eradicated. Though obesity can be prevented by changes in lifestyle, the reality is that in the current society we live in, this scenario has very few chances to improve.”

Machi grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, as the daughter of parents who worked in banks. “I never imagined that I was going to have a career in science in the U.S.,” she said.

She attended São Judas Tadeu University in Brazil and studied physical education due to her love of basketball. After discovering an interest for science, she immediately began a master’s program at the same university in exercise physiology after graduating with her bachelor’s degree in 2007. Her master’s research, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, examined the impact of exercise on cardiac disease due to a high sugar diet. Machi’s grandmother had heart issues and needed a valve replaced three times. Watching her struggle “brought me close to heart science in a way,” she said.

Machi then earned a doctorate from University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. Using a rat model, she investigated how exercise impacts aging individuals with metabolic syndrome, a group of conditions — including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol — that can lead to heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other health problems.

During her doctoral work, she received a scholarship from the Brazilian National Research Council to study at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) in South Florida with Mariana Morris, Ph.D. This connection led to a postdoc after graduating, where she worked on a project with Morris funded by the U.S. Department of Defense to examine Gulf War Illness, an unexplained chronic, multi-system disorder impacting veterans of the Gulf War.

In 2018, she began a second postdoc at the University of Miami, with Rodrigues (who was faculty there at the time) to examine how a diet rich in sugar and fat leads to obesity, which puts people at greater risk for heart attack or stroke, she said. In particular, she’s interested in figuring out if you can trigger weight loss by turning off a molecular switch that plays a role in inflammation and its contribution to obesity. This is the work she’s continuing now at FAU and ultimately, she said she hopes it will lead to novel treatment approaches to weight gain.

Though originally torn between two fields — science and physical education, she said she’s happy she chose science. “I am the first one in my family with a doctorate,” she said. “Looking back I am very proud and happy with my decision.”