About the Office

Kathy Matt - Associate Vice President for Biomedical Affairs & Clinical Partnerships

Dr. Matt directs Arizona State University’s linkages to the biomedical community and facilitates interdisciplinary and translational research and educational initiatives. In this capacity, she assists in forging strong relationships with ASU’s biomedical partners in the community through institutional memorandum of understanding, joint faculty appointments, joint research seed grants, and joint educational programs including professional and graduate programs.

Matt is also a founding faculty member at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix in partnership with Arizona State University, and the Franca G. Oreffice Dean's Distinguished Professor in ASU’s Department of Kinesiology, where she has taught since 1987.

Matt has published over 50 peer reviewed research articles. Her research interests include the effects of stress, diet, aging, and exercise on the neuroendocrine system. Research topics investigated in her laboratory include: the effects of age, gender and fitness on the neuroendocrine systems and linkages to risk for disease; the impact of stress and exercise on disease activity in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis; and the effects of chronic separation stress on the neuroendocrine system in an animal model. Matt has conducted research for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, as well as worked for NASA at the Center for Commercial Development of Pennsylvania State University. Her research has been funded by NIH, National Arthritis Foundation, NASA and the Arizona Center for Disease Control.

She served for one year as an Endocrine Society Health Policy Fellow for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, in the office of the committee chair, Senator James Jeffords (1998-1999). In that position she was instrumental in the writing and introduction of the “Medicare Wellness Act” and the “Patch Act”, a home health bill.

Matt has a Ph.D. in endocrine physiology from the University of Washington, Seattle, and completed a National Institutes of Health (NIH) post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. She has also held faculty positions at Northeastern Ohio College of Medicine and Kent State University.