National Postdoc Appreciation Week: Dr. Chloé Jones
This week we’re celebrating Dr. Chloé Jones!
Chloé Jones, Ph.D., M.S., is in her third year as a postdoctoral fellow in the OPT for Health lab. Dr. Jones earned her Ph.D. in Kinesiology from Auburn University in 2024, and also holds an M.S. in Exercise Physiology. She earned a TL1 fellowship for her dissertation work developing a culturally adapted resistance exercise intervention for young Black women, and she continues to focus her research efforts on promoting cardiometabolic health in this population. During her time in the lab, she has lent her skills to the WE trial (MPIs LaRose, Mosavel), a grassroots, multilevel intervention for cardiometabolic health among Petersburg residents, and the VA-ACCERT Center’s flagship project, POWER (Academic PI LaRose, Community PI Plent): a multilevel intervention designed to target social drivers of health to improve nutrition quality and physical activity among residents of income-based housing.
Last year, Dr. Jones was awarded VCU’s Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA), which combines a traditional postdoctoral research experience with the development of teaching skills through formal pedagogic training and mentored placements at HBCUs (Historically Black College or Universities). Her ongoing research project is a qualitative study among young Black women with varying experience levels of resistance exercise aiming to identify culturally adapted strategies to promote resistance exercise using an mHealth app. Jones has completed formative interviews with her target population, and is now moving on to co-design workshops where she will refine ideas and input on the program topics, features, and design of the app. Jones acknowledges the unique nature of her project: “It is very novel,” she says, “there aren’t any research-based mobile apps targeting resistance exercise for Black women.”
Dr. Jones is also preparing to teach in the spring of 2027 at Virginia State University as part of her IRACDA training. She is most excited to build connections with students and to see firsthand (from the other side of the podium) the impact that effective teaching can have. Dr. Jones will be working with Virginia State University, the US’s first state-funded four-year university for Black Americans. “I’m excited to work with VSU,” says Jones, “as an underrepresented woman who has been at mostly PWIs [predominantly white institutions].”
We’re grateful to have Dr. Jones on the team, and can’t image the lab without her!
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