Dr. Lina Huerta-Saenz is an early career physician-scientist and pediatric endocrinologist. She has prior working experience in clinical research studies in type 1 diabetes (T1D), nutrition assessment of youth with T1D and long-acting growth hormone.

Before joining Penn State, she worked as a sub-investigator for TrialNet (Pathway to Prevention study), a multi-center research study dedicated to identifying T1D antibodies in people with high genetic risk to develop T1D. She was also the medical director of a type 2 diabetes (T2D) prevention program for youth with prediabetes.

She is currently the principal investigator at Penn State for DINAMO, a multicenter randomized clinical trial for youth with uncontrolled T2D. She is also currently working on clinical research projects studying the impact of medical nutrition therapy in pediatric patients with early onset T1D and T2D, with the goal to preserve beta-cell function.

She recently received funding from Children's Miracle Network to investigate further aspects of the process of partial remission of T1D in youth, and has NIH funding through the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for a meta-analysis of pediatric patients with prediabetes and microvascular disease.

Dr. Lina Huerta-Saenz is a Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute KL2 Scholar (2022-2024).