Appendix C

Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers and Planning Committee Members

Beatrice Abiero, Ph.D., is a policy research leader at Instacart, a leading grocery technology company in North America. She is passionate about researching health and food access and prides herself on being a creative and results-oriented thought leader. Dr. Abiero manages external research partnerships, directs large-scale research studies, and engages in coalition building for Instacart’s Policy and Government Affairs team. She leverages her extensive experience in social science research to provide actionable insights that inform Instacart’s policy and business development, ballot initiatives, and strategic priorities. Prior to joining Instacart, Dr. Abiero led large-scale analyses and reports as key analytics manager for a $31.8 million patient experience and satisfaction survey program to inform Military Health System stakeholders on how to improve care for 4.5 million beneficiaries. Her research resulted in peer-reviewed publications and numerous high-profile reports that provided military surgeon generals and C-suite health executives with strategies for enhancing quality care and patient experience. Dr. Abiero earned a dual-title Ph.D. in health policy and administration and demography from The Pennsylvania State University.

Alison Brown, Ph.D., M.S., R.D.N., serves as a program director at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, where her work centers on the social determinants of health and nutrition health disparities. She is a public health nutrition researcher committed to addressing diet-related health disparities through research, community engagement and empowerment, and systems change. Dr. Brown’s past research explored immigrant health and diet and cardiovascular disease

outcomes. She also served as past chair of the National Organization of Blacks in Dietetics and Nutrition and as adjunct faculty at Prince George’s Community College. She is a former science and technology policy fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics diversity leader, American Society of Nutrition science policy fellow, and board chair of a community-owned grocery store in Boston. In 2018, she was honored as a 40 under 40 Leader in Minority Health by the National Minority Quality Forum. Dr. Brown received a bachelor of science in chemistry from Spelman College and thereafter completed her master of science from Columbia University in nutrition and applied physiology. She then earned her Ph.D. from Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

Celia Cole, M.A., is chief executive officer of Feeding Texas, the state association of food banks. The Feeding Texas network works collaboratively with more than 3,000 local partners to increase access to nutritious food for people facing hunger, improve community nutrition, mitigate the root causes of hunger, and strengthen crisis response. Prior to Feeding Texas, Ms. Cole served as senior food policy analyst at Every Texas, a public policy research and advocacy organization. Over the course of her 25-year career, she has led advocacy campaigns to strengthen federal nutrition programs, established a statewide produce collaborative to increase access to fresh produce, and forged cross-sector partnerships with diverse stakeholders to increase food security, improve health outcomes, and build a robust response to hunger. Over the last 2 years, she has coordinated the network’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, marshaling new resources to food banks that have enabled them to double their food distribution to meet the surge in demand from communities devastated by the economic and health crisis. Ms. Cole holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Columbia University and a master’s degree from the Institute of Latin American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Cindy Davis, Ph.D., serves as national program leader for the program in human nutrition conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service. In this role, she helps direct the scientific program for six Human Nutrition Research Centers. Prior to joining USDA, she was director of grants and extramural activities in the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS), where she actively engaged and encouraged partnerships with other National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutes and Centers to develop a portfolio that advances both nutritional and botanical dietary supplement research for optimizing public health. Dr. Davis is also actively involved in a number of government working groups focused on the microbiome, including being a cofounder and cochair of the Joint

Agency Microbiome working group (NIH, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and USDA). Before moving to ODS, she was a program director in the Nutritional Sciences Research Group at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Davis completed her postdoctoral training at the Laboratory of Experimental Carcinogenesis at the National Cancer Institute. She then joined the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center, USDA, as a research nutritionist. In 2000, Dr. Davis received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and was named the USDA Early Career Scientist. She is a supplement editor for the Journal of Nutrition, assistant editor for Nutrition Reviews, and a member of the editorial board for Advances in Nutrition. Dr. Davis received her Ph.D. in nutrition with a minor in human cancer biology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Kofi D. Essel, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, is inaugural food-as-medicine program director at Elevance Health. As a core member of the Health Outcomes Organization team, he works to coordinate with the broader social impact strategy, health equity, and medical policy initiatives throughout the enterprise. He leads efforts in designing innovative approaches to address diet-related chronic diseases and social risk using novel food interventions. Dr. Essel is a board-certified community pediatrician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. He has dedicated his career to advocacy/research around health care and public health workforce training, health disparities, and community engagement, with expertise and national recognition in the areas of addressing diet-related chronic disease and food insecurity with patients and families. Dr. Essel sits on the board of directors for the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), serves as a physician advisor for the Partnership for a Healthier America’s “Veggies Early & Often” campaign, and is a member of the executive committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section on Obesity. He also coauthored a national toolkit for pediatric providers on addressing food insecurity in their clinical settings with the AAP and FRAC. Dr. Essel earned his M.D. and M.P.H. in epidemiology from The George Washington University.

Mario Ferruzzi, Ph.D., M.S., is professor and chief of the section of Developmental Nutrition in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He also serves as director of the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, a partnership between the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service. Dr. Ferruzzi joined the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center as director in 2021, having previously served as David H. Murdock distinguished professor at North Carolina State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute (2016–2021) and as professor of food science and

nutrition science at Purdue University (2004–2016). His research interests are at the interface of agriculture, food, and nutrition sciences in the study of food matrix and processing factors that influence micronutrient and phytochemical bioavailability, metabolism, and impact to human health. He has a particular interest in strategies that can be leveraged to improve the nutritional and functional quality of food products for at-risk populations. Dr. Ferruzzi earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in food science and nutrition from The Ohio State University.

Edward L. Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., is professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Over the past three decades, his work has been based largely on prospective cohort studies, such as the Nurses’ Health Study I & II and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. His research focuses on how nutritional, lifestyle and genetic factors affect the risk of development and progression of various malignancies, especially those of the large intestine, other gastrointestinal cancers, and prostate cancer. A specific interest has been understanding etiologic mechanisms underlying the relation between diet, physical activity, body weight and composition, and metabolic dysfunction and cancer risk. Dr. Giovannucci currently serves as an American Cancer Society clinical researcher professor. Fourteen of his former primary pre- or postdoctoral mentees are full professors and 11 are assistant/associate professors. Dr. Giovannucci graduated from Harvard University in 1980, and he received his M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. He did his residency in anatomic pathology at the University of Connecticut and completed his Sc.D. in epidemiology from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in 1992.

Joel Gittelsohn, Ph.D., M.S., is professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a public health nutritionist and medical anthropologist, who focuses on the primary prevention of chronic disease in disadvantaged communities. With more than 300 publications, Dr. Gittelsohn has led multiple intervention trials aimed at improving the food environment and providing education needed to support healthy food choices and reduce obesity and diabetes in Native communities, Baltimore City, and Pacific Islander communities. He has conducted a series of intervention trials with corner stores, carryouts, wholesalers, churches, and recreation centers in Baltimore City. Recently, he has begun to use systems science methods in his work to simulate the impact and unexpected consequences of policies to improve the urban food environment, and he is developing an app to improve the distribution of healthy foods to food sources located in low-income neighborhoods of Baltimore. Dr. Gittelsohn currently leads grants for improving the food

environment by working with independently owned restaurants, retail food stores, and food pantries. He earned his Ph.D. in medical anthropology from the University of Connecticut.

Robert S. Harvey, D.Min., M.T.S., is president of FoodCorps and an educator and community leader pursuing a vision of justice, equity, and love. FoodCorps is a national organization committed to ensuring that all the nation’s children have access to nourishing food in schools at the intersection of community-building and racial and economic justice. He also holds a visiting professorship in the practice of public leadership. Prior to FoodCorps, Dr. Harvey served as superintendent of East Harlem Scholars Academies, a community-based network of public charter schools, and as chief academic officer of East Harlem Tutorial Program (EHTP) in New York City. Before that, he served as chief operating officer, head of school, dean of students, and classroom teacher at EHTP. Dr. Harvey is author of Abolitionist Leadership in Schools: Undoing Systemic Injustice through Communally Consciousness Education (Routledge, 2021), which explores school leadership and racial equity through the moral arc of an abolitionist lineage, and Teaching as Protest: Emancipating Classrooms through Racial Consciousness (Routledge, 2022), which frames philosophical and practical pedagogy that centers freeing teaching and learning spaces for students and teachers. He is a Pahara Institute Fellow, serves as chair of The Current Project Board of Directors, and is a member of the National Black Theatre Board of Directors. Dr. Harvey earned a master of theological studies from Harvard University and a doctor of ministry from the Memphis Theological Seminary.

Josh Hix, M.B.A., is cofounder and CEO of Season Health, the only integrated food-as-medicine platform that enables people to eat well and live well. By combining evidence-based clinical care with access to affordable medically tailored meals and groceries, Season Health empowers individuals and their families to make informed, sustainable choices, measurably improving both health outcomes and quality of life. Mr. Hix is also cofounder and former CEO of Plated, which shipped millions of meals to over 95 percent of the United States before being acquired by Albertsons grocery brands in 2017. He has a lifelong interest in health and nutrition. Mr. Hix received his B.S. in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Johanna Lampe, Ph.D., R.D., is professor and associate division director in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and a research professor in the Nutritional Sciences Program and Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her research focuses on the effect of diet on cancer susceptibility in humans and the

effects of human genetic and gut microbiome variation in response to dietary constituents and dietary patterns. As part of several transdisciplinary collaborative studies, she also applies a variety of -omics approaches to the development of biomarkers of dietary exposure. Dr. Lampe has received several awards for her work, including the American Society for Nutrition Mary Swartz Rose Senior Investigator Award for research on the safety and efficacy of bioactive compounds for human health and the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Prevention Stars in Nutrition and Cancer award, which recognizes research contributions in the field of nutrition and cancer. She earned her Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of Minnesota.

Melissa Laska, Ph.D., R.D., serves as McKnight distinguished professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Her expertise is in nutrition promotion, healthy food access, and nutrition inequities, and she has a broad background in community-informed prevention, intervention, and policy research. Over the past two decades, Dr. Laska has led a multifaceted research portfolio with the goal of realizing our potential to support healthy communities—particularly communities that have been historically under resourced—as well as individuals’ autonomy in making healthy choices, including healthy food choices. Her interdisciplinary work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and U.S. Department of Agriculture, and she has coauthored nearly 200 peer-reviewed publications to date. Dr. Laska is clinically trained as a registered dietitian. She completed her dietetic internship at Vanderbilt University and earned her Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tashara M. Leak, Ph.D., R.D., is associate professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and associate dean in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. She has a secondary appointment as associate professor of nutrition research in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Leak also serves as codirector of the Cornell Action Research Collaborative, which provides infrastructure for researchers, policy makers, and community partners to collaborate on pressing societal issues (e.g., food insecurity) across New York State. Regarding her research, Dr. Leak examines disparities in nutrition and health outcomes among U.S. adolescents and designs culturally inclusive interventions in New York City to address these inequities. Her research is predominately funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Dr. Leak holds a Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.

Cindy Leung, Sc.D., M.P.H., is assistant professor of public health nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a nutrition epidemiologist with additional training in health psychology and health disparities research. Her program of research focuses on understanding structural determinants of diet-related health disparities in the United States with a particular focus on populations at risk of food insecurity. Her research has extensively examined the effects of food insecurity on dietary quality, health behaviors, and physical and mental health on populations across the life course using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Dr. Leung holds an M.P.H. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Sc.D. in nutrition and epidemiology from Harvard University.

Brent Ling, M.S.P.H., serves as director of external affairs at Wholesome Wave. He is an advocate for health in all policy and a strong supporter of open and accessible government structures—this belief is rooted in over a decade of experience as a social-benefit small business owner, manager, investor, and frontline worker. Mr. Ling has been published in leading academic journals on topics of health and policy maker engagement. A longtime resident of the District of Columbia, he is a graduate of the schools of public health at Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University.

Sarah Ludmer, R.D., is senior director of well-being and regulatory for Kellogg Company. She has been appointed to the future leadership team of W. K. Kellogg Co. to serve as chief well-being and sustainable business officer when the company spins off in January 2024. Ms. Ludmer joined Kellogg Company in February 2014. Prior to becoming senior director in June 2019, she held several roles in nutrition and regulatory affairs, combining her passion for public health and love of consumers to unlock growth. In this capacity, she ensured strategic outcomes and helped brands positively impact both people and the planet while meeting the needs of their diverse range of consumers. Before joining Kellogg, Ms. Ludmer spent 5 years with Del Monte Foods in the research and quality team supporting both nutrition and regulatory affairs for pet and consumer goods. Prior to that, she spent 10 years in clinical practice building a strong foundation in nutrition and public health. She is a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Ms. Ling holds a B.S. in nutrition from The Pennsylvania State University, completed her dietetic internship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and is a registered dietitian.

William Masters, Ph.D., M.A., is professor of food economics and policy in the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University, where he leads the Food Prices for Nutrition project, which computes the cost and affordability of healthy diets, as well as the Innovative Metrics and Methods for

Agriculture and Nutrition Actions Fellowships program, among other initiatives. From 2011 to 2014, Dr. Masters served as chair of the Friedman School’s Department of Food and Nutrition Policy, and before coming to Tufts was a faculty member in agricultural economics at Purdue University (1991–2010). He was also a lecturer or faculty member at the University of Zimbabwe (1989–1990), Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (2000), and Columbia University (2003–2004). Dr. Masters is coauthor of an undergraduate textbook, Economics of Agricultural Development: World Food Systems and Resource Use (Routledge, 4th ed., 2021) and former editor-in-chief of the journal Agricultural Economics (2006–2011). He was named an international fellow of the African Association of Agricultural Economists (2010) and elected fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association in 2020, from which he received the Bruce Gardner Memorial Prize for Applied Policy Analysis (2013), the Publication of Enduring Quality Award (2014), the Quality of Research Discovery Award (2019), and the Quality of Communications Award (2022). At Tufts, his courses on economics of agriculture, food, and nutrition were recognized with student-nominated, university-wide teaching awards in each of the past 2 years offered (2019 and 2022). Dr. Masters holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Food Research Institute at Stanford University.

Robin A. McKinnon, Ph.D., M.P.A., is senior advisor for nutrition policy at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). She works to advance nutrition-related activities across CFSAN, including the FDA elements in the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. McKinnon was a health policy specialist at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health. She previously served on the planning committee for the 2009 workshop of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine titled The Public Health Effects of Food Deserts; in 2021, she served on the planning committee for the National Academies workshop Challenges and Opportunities for Precision and Personalized Nutrition. Dr. McKinnon earned a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University in 2002 and a Ph.D. in public policy and administration from The George Washington University in 2009.

Emily Oken, M.D., M.P.H., is Alice Hamilton Professor and vice chair in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and professor in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She directs the Division of Chronic Disease Research Across the Lifecourse within the Department of Population Medicine. Her research focuses on the influence of nutrition and other modifiable factors during pregnancy and early childhood

on long-term maternal and child health, especially cardiometabolic health and cognitive development. Dr. Oken was a planning committee member for the 2020 workshop of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine titled Nutrition During Pregnancy and Lactation: Exploring New Evidence. She served on the Technical Expert Collaborative 1 for the Dietary Guidance Development Project for Birth to 24 Months and Pregnancy and coauthored the work that came out of the committee. Dr. Oken obtained her master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1996, completed her internship and residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at the Harvard Combined Program, and completed her fellowship in general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Marco A. Palma, Ph.D., M.S., is professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. His areas of interest are consumer economics, experimental and behavioral economics, and neuroeconomics. Dr. Palma is a Texas A&M Presidential Impact Fellow and director of the Human Behavior Laboratory (HBL), a transdisciplinary facility that integrates state-of-the-art technology to measure neurophysiological responses of human decision making. The HBL aims to facilitate the integration of neurophysiological responses to traditional methods of studying human behavior to better understand, predict, and change behavior that improves people’s health and well-being. Dr. Palma earned his M.S. in food and resource economics and Ph.D. from the University of Florida.

Jennifer L. Pomeranz, J.D., M.P.H., is associate professor in the Department of Public Health Policy and Management in the School of Global Public Health at New York University. She was previously director of legal initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University (now the University of Connecticut Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health). Her research focuses on legal opportunities and barriers to enacting public health policies at the federal, state, and local levels with a primary focus on food and nutrition policy. Ms. Pomeranz is author of the book Food Law for Public Health and the first author of the book Public Health Law in Practice, published by Oxford University Press in 2016 and 2023, respectively. She has also authored dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles on policy and legal options for addressing products that cause harm, diet-related disease, and social injustices that lead to health disparities. Ms. Pomeranz earned her M.P.H. from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and J.D. from Cornell Law School.

Jill Reedy, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., is chief of the Risk Factor Assessment Branch (RFAB) of the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program

(EGRP) in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH). As branch chief, she oversees EGRP’s research portfolio and initiatives that focus on dietary and physical activity assessment; methods, tools, technologies, and resources for risk factor assessment; and obesity policy research. Her scientific interests include different methodological approaches in dietary pattern analysis, dietary surveillance, obesity policy, new technologies for dietary assessment, and measures of the food environment. Dr. Reedy leads the Dietary Patterns Methods Project, a collaboration with investigators from three large U.S. cohorts, which aims to systematically examine index-based scoring systems using standardized methods with mortality outcomes. She partners with colleagues at the NCI, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research to develop resources for researchers, including the Measures Registry, User Guides, Catalogue of Surveillance Systems, and the Healthy Eating Index. Dr. Reedy is a member of the Data Analysis Team for the 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and she has served in a similar capacity for past Dietary Guidelines. She serves on the Senior Leadership Group for the NIH Nutrition Research Task Force and leads several trans-NIH working groups, as well as the NIH Obesity Policy Research Grantees Network. Dr. Reedy earned a B.A. in foods and nutrition at Goshen College, an M.P.H. at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in nutrition at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Rebecca Seguin-Fowler, Ph.D., M.S., R.D.N., L.D., CSCS, is associate director for the Texas A&M Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture, where she leads the Healthy Living social and behavioral research program. She is also chief scientific officer for the Healthy Texas Institute, professor with tenure in the Department of Nutrition in the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, and graduate faculty in the Department of Health Promotion and Community Health Sciences at the School of Public Health at Texas A&M University. Dr. Seguin-Fowler is also owner of StrongPeople, LLC, an organization that provides consulting services in the areas of nutrition, food, exercise, and wellness, as well as resources, such as trainings and curricula, to advance community health. She is recognized internationally for her expertise in behavioral intervention development for rural residents, low-income families, and older adults; food systems and food access interventions; civic engagement to catalyze policy, systems, and environmental change; and dissemination and implementation science. Dr. Seguin-Fowler has received numerous awards, including the Mead Johnson Award from the American Society for Nutrition; an Excellence Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine; and most recently, the Friedman School Alumni Excellence in Nutrition Award from Tufts University. A registered and

licensed dietitian, she received her bachelor’s degree in clinical exercise physiology from Boston University and a master’s degree in nutrition communication and doctorate in food policy and applied nutrition from Tufts University.

Jessica Smith, Ph.D., is senior principal scientist at Mars Wrigley, where she leads nutrition scientific and regulatory affairs for the North American region. Prior to joining Mars Wrigley in February 2022, she held various roles from 2015 to 2022 at General Mills’ Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition. Before transitioning to the food industry, Dr. Smith began her career in academia by completing two postdoctoral fellowships at Laval University (Quebec, QC) and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, where her research focused on the associations between diet, obesity, and chronic disease risk. She has a B.S. in nutrition from the University of Western Ontario (London, ON); an M.S. in nutrition from McGill University (Montreal, QC); and a Ph.D. in physiology from Laval University (Quebec, QC), where her thesis focused on the physiology of adipose tissue in obesity.

Kevin Volpp, M.D., Ph.D., is Mark V. Pauly Presidential Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Policy, and of health care management at the Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also founding director of the Penn Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics. His research focuses on the impact of financial and organizational incentives on health behavior and health outcomes. Dr. Volpp has been recognized by numerous awards, including the Alice S. Hersh Award from AcademyHealth, the British Medical Journal Group Award for Translating Research into Practice, outstanding paper of the year from multiple societies, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and numerous others. He cocreated the Penn Way to Health platform, used to facilitate behavioral interventions, which has now been deployed in more than 200 studies by investigators from more than 20 universities, with participants in all 50 states. Dr. Volpp earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in biology from Harvard University and was a Rotary Scholar at Freie Universitat in Berlin, Germany, where he studied the organization of health care delivery in the former East Germany. He earned an M.D. from Perelman School of Medicine and a Ph.D. from the Wharton School, both at the University of Pennsylvania.

Robert Waterland, Ph.D., is professor at Baylor College of Medicine and is based in the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Agriculture Research Service Children’s Nutrition Research Center in Houston, Texas. He holds faculty

appointments in the Department of Pediatrics/Nutrition and the Department of Molecular & Human Genetics. Dr. Waterland’s research focuses on understanding how nutrition during critical periods of prenatal and early postnatal development affects gene expression, metabolism, and chronic disease susceptibility in adulthood. His laboratory studies both mouse models and humans to elucidate the mechanisms by which early nutrition and other environmental influences affect the establishment and maintenance of epigenetic gene regulation, with a focus on DNA methylation. He serves on the council of the International Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease and various journal editorial boards. Dr. Waterland received his B.S. in physics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and worked for several years at the University of Pennsylvania, first with Britton Chance (biochemistry/biophysics), then with Albert Stunkard (clinical obesity research). After earning his Ph.D. in human nutrition from Cornell University (with Cutberto Garza), he conducted postdoctoral research in developmental genetics with Randy Jirtle at Duke University.

Fang Fang Zhang, Ph.D., M.D., is Neely Family Professor and associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University. She is a nutritional epidemiologist with expertise in assessing dietary intake patterns, trends, and disparities in the population, and conducting observational studies and clinical trials to investigate the role of nutrition in chronic disease prevention and control. Dr. Zhang’s research interests also include quantifying preventable cancer burden associated with suboptimal diet and assessing the cost-effectiveness of population strategies for improving diet and reducing cancer burden and disparities in the United States, as well as evaluating strategies for integrating food and nutrition into health care. She is coleading the LASTING project, which is focused on assessing the impact of diet on four pillars (health, environment, cost, and society). Dr. Zhang is a recipient of the Eileen O’Neil Citation for Excellence in Teaching and an inaugural recipient of the Miriam E. Nelson Tisch Faculty Fellow from Tufts University. She received her M.D. from Fudan University Shanghai Medical College and her Ph.D. from Columbia University.