Winners

Jeannette Beasley, PhD

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Research proposal: Effects of intake of sugar on the development and prevention of major non-communicable diseases.

"We know that foods high in sugar are the largest contributors to energy intake in this country, so determining this connection is critically important—particularly in a group that is traditionally under-studied and under-served in medicine."

Dr. Beasley is a nutritional epidemiologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She obtained her BSc in biology at the College of William and Mary, MPH/RD in nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and PhD in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her postdoctoral training, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, focused on the development and evaluation of novel dietary assessment methods. Beasley’s recent work with the Women’s Health Initiative demonstrated an inverse association between dietary protein and frailty that was more evident after accounting for measurement error using biomarker calibration of energy and protein intake. The Sackler Award will extend upon this work by applying similar calibration methods to better understand the role of intake of sugars in disease within a multi-cultural setting.

Kristina H. Lewis, MD, MPH, SM

Kaiser Center for Health Research, Southeast

Research proposal: The KP personal shopper: A pilot to strengthen the impact of dietary advice.

"Bridging the gap between knowing and doing is one of the hardest parts of behavior change – getting consumers to act on dietary advice is no exception. Because diet-related chronic illness is so common, it is critical for healthcare to innovate in this area."

Dr. Lewis is a practicing general internist and Assistant Investigator at the Kaiser Center for Health Research in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research focuses on innovative interventions to improve the treatment of obesity and related conditions, with a focus on making more evidence-based policy decisions. Lewis received her medical degree from Tulane University, where she concurrently earned an MPH in Epidemiology. She went on to residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, followed by the Harvard General Internal Medicine Fellowship at the Obesity Prevention Program (part of the Department of Population Medicine). During fellowship she earned a second master’s degree in health policy and management from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her current work includes leading an insurance claims-based study to examine bariatric surgical outcomes and how these outcomes are modified by patient-level factors such as socioeconomic status, age, and preoperative disease severity.

Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, PhD, MPH

Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Research proposal: Comparative effectiveness of population strategies to improve diet.

"While we know that dietary quality plays a major role in health, the optimal interventions to improve dietary habits are unclear. Our research will evaluate how different policy approaches, including food regulation, food pricing, and schools and workplace programs, can improve dietary habits in populations."

Dr. Mozaffarian is a cardiologist and epidemiologist; Co-Director of the Program in Cardiovascular Epidemiology; Associate Professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School; and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research focuses on the effects of lifestyle, particularly dietary habits, on cardiovascular health and disease. Mozaffarian has authored over 150 scientific publications and research studies relating to lifestyle and cardiovascular health. He has served on many national and international committees and advisory boards and is currently Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation / WHO Global Burden of Diseases Nutrition and Chronic Diseases Expert Group. A Fellow of the American College of Cardiology and a Fellow of the American Heart Association, Mozaffarian received a BS in biological sciences from Stanford University (with Honors, with Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa), an MD from Columbia University (Alpha Omega Alpha), an MPH from the University of Washington, and a Doctorate in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. He is board-certified in Cardiovascular Medicine and remains clinically active on the cardiology service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Judges

Sharon R. Akabas, PhD

Institute for Human Nutrition, Columbia University

Dr. Akabas has a PhD in Nutrition Science and Exercise Physiology from Columbia University. She is currently Director of the MS in Nutrition at Columbia University’s Institute of Human Nutrition and Associate Director for Educational Initiatives. She teaches as Columbia’s Institute of Human Nutrition. Akabas has organized several symposia in recent years, with the goal to convene national and international experts on controversial topics, and to make recommendations for research, practice and policy. Most recently, Akabas has focused on community-based strategies for the prevention of childhood obesity. Akabas has also acted in a consulting capacity to sports teams, government agencies, and private industry on issues relating to the translation of science to public policy and to clinical and public health settings. Recently, Akabas co-edited The Textbook of Obesity, published by Wiley Blackwell Publishers. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, Columbia University.

Gerald F. Combs, Jr., PhD

Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center, USDA-ARS

Dr. Combs is the Director of the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center in Grand Forks, ND, having served in that capacity since 2002 when he moved from Cornell University, where he was a Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences. Combs graduated from the University of Maryland in 1969 and subsequently obtained MS and PhD degrees from Cornell. He held a faculty position at Auburn University from 1974–1975 and joined the Cornell faculty in 1975. He is a Professor Emeritus, Cornell University, and holds appointments as Adjunct Professor at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of North Dakota, and the School of Food Systems, North Dakota State University. Combs is a leader in selenium nutrition/metabolism. He has been selected to work in various capacities abroad (notably as the first US scientist to work in modern China), as well as appointed to the USDA Senior Scientific Research Service. His current research addresses the proteomics/metabolomics of selenium in humans, including effects of adiposity.

Ian Darnton-Hill, MBBS

Tufts University and University of Sydney, Australia

Dr. Darnton-Hill has more than 35 years of practical experience in public health interventions, health policy, and analysis of national and other programs, with an emphasis on public health nutrition. He is currently Adjunct Professor at The Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise & Eating Disorders at the University of Sydney, Australia, and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy, Tufts University, USA. He has held many senior positions at UNICEF, WHO, Helen Keller International, and JSI. Darnton-Hill has worked and lived in a variety of countries and now consults with the World Bank, the UN and other agencies, and is chairing a steering committee for the BOND Project at the National Institutes of Health. He has over a 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, of the American College of Nutrition, and of the Royal Society of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

S. K. Dey, PhD

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

Dr. Dey’s laboratory has been engaged in defining the molecular and genetic basis of preimplantation embryo development and embryo-uterine interactions during embryo implantation. His group has shown that any aberration of the implantation process leads to adverse ripple effects throughout the subsequent course of development, compromising pregnancy outcome. The work from his group has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, Genes & Development, Development, Developmental Cell, Nature Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Endocrinology, and Molecular Endocrinology. He was recruited from Vanderbilt University in 2008 to open a new division of Reproductive Sciences at the Cincinnati Children’s and is currently Lova Riekert chair and professor of Pediatrics, Director of Division of Reproductive Sciences at Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sandra Engle, PhD

Primary Pharmacology Group, Pfizer

Dr. Engle received a BA in Biology with an emphasis in Human Genetics from Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. She earned a PhD in Medical and Molecular Genetics at Indiana University School of Medicine, working in the laboratory of Jay Tischfield, where she generated a mouse model of human APRT deficiency. She completed two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine under the tutelage of Drs. Nelson Horseman and Tom Doetschman. In 2001, she took a position with the Genetically Modified Models Group at Aventis before moving to a similar group at Pfizer in 2004. She is currently a Senior Principal Scientist leading the Pluripotent Stem Cell Biology Laboratory of the Primary Pharmacology Group within Pfizer Inc. Her lab focuses on the generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells, in vitro differentiation of stem cells to terminally differentiated cell types of interest, and the genetic modification of human stem cells in support of drug discovery efforts.

Martin Hewison, PhD

David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA

Dr. Hewison is currently Professor in Residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine UCLA where his group has an established interest in the role of vitamin D in human physiology, and in particular the interaction between vitamin D and the immune system. Dr Hewison gained his PhD in Biochemistry from Guy’s Hospital Medical School London in 1987 and then spent nine years at University College London, initially as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a Junior Faculty. He then moved to the University of Birmingham where he established the UK’s major vitamin D research group, leading to an appointment as Professor in Molecular Endocrinology in 2004. In 2005 he joined Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Los Angeles but was then recruited to neighboring UCLA at the end of 2007. Dr Hewison has published over 160 peer-reviewed manuscripts focused on various facets of steroid hormone endocrinology. He currently has a team of three postdocs, a clinical fellow and two PhD students and his work supported by NIH and March of Dimes funding.

Elvira Isganaitis, MD, MPH

Joslin Diabetes Center

Dr. Isganaitis is a Pediatric Endocrinologist and Research Associate at Joslin Diabetes Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Her research uses mouse models of abnormal prenatal environments, including gestational undernutrition and maternal insulin resistance, to investigate developmental determinants of childhood obesity and diabetes risk. She has published several original articles on the intergenerational transmission of obesity and on adipose tissue dysfunction in the setting of catch-up growth, as well as review articles on the prevention of childhood obesity, on the mechanistic links between fast food and obesity, and on adipocyte dysfunction following abnormal prenatal exposures.

Salomeh Keyhani, MD, MPH

University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Keyhani is an Assistant Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UC at San Francisco. She is a practicing primary care internist and a health services researcher. Keyhani completed residency training in internal medicine and a fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar program at Johns Hopkins. She received her MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and also completed a health policy fellowship in the US Senate. Her research interests include the examination of the quality of health care services and health care policy research, examining the underuse and overuse of medical procedures,and comparing the quality of care in different health systems. Her policy research has largely focused on areas important to health care reform and factors that may contribute to inefficiency and the use of inappropriate care in the US health care system, including the quality and physician viewpoints of national.