Navindra Seeram serves as a professor in the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Rhode Island. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, in 1998 and completed postdoctoral research at Michigan State University. Prior to joining URI, he was the Assistant Director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an Assistant Professor in the UCLA School of Medicine. His research group, the Bioactive Botanical Research Laboratory, investigates plant foods and natural products for therapeutic and preventive effects against chronic human diseases, with particular expertise in maple phytochemistry and the anti-inflammatory properties of maple syrup phytochemicals. Seeram has authored and co-authored over 230 peer-reviewed papers and has secured continuous extramural funding from industry and federal sources. He received the 2009 Young Scientist Award from the Agricultural and Food Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. Seeram held leadership roles at URI, including chair of the biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences department until 2024. He is also an associate professor of research at URI’s George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience.