Appendix A
Committee Member Biographies
Kathleen M. Rasmussen, Sc.D., (chair) is the Nancy Schlegel Meinig Professor of Maternal and Child Nutrition Emeritus at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the nutritional needs of pregnant and lactating women. Dr. Rasmussen has an Sc.M. (1975) degree and an Sc.D. (1978) degree in nutrition. Relative to the proposed activity, use of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans was central to the development of revised food packages for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, a committee of the National Academies that she chaired. Dr. Rasmussen has served as the chair of three other committees of the National Academies, namely the committee that revised the guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy, a follow-up committee that focused on the dissemination of these guidelines, and the recent committee that scanned the available evidence about the nutrient content of human milk. Dr. Rasmussen also worked on the Pregnancy Technical Expert Collaborative for the Pregnancy and Birth to 24 Months (P/B–24) Project. She has served as the elected president of the International Society for Research on Human Milk and Lactation and the American Society for Nutritional Sciences and has received career-achievement awards for her research in pregnancy, her research in lactation, and her contributions in education, mentoring, and public service in nutrition. During 2022–2025, Dr. Rasmussen is serving the Food Bank of the Southern Tier (N.Y.) as an elected member of its Board of Directors.
Stephanie A. Atkinson, Ph.D., D.Sc. (honoris causa), FCAHS, FASN, is a tenured professor and nutrition clinician–scientist in the Department of
Pediatrics, associate member, Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, faculty of health sciences, McMaster University and special professional staff in McMaster Children’s Hospital. Her research has focused on optimizing the health of infants and children, including investigations of the factors influencing growth and skeletal development in premature infants and children with bone disorders secondary to pediatric diseases or drug therapy, such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia and cystic fibrosis. Currently, her research program encompasses randomized clinical trials and epidemiological investigations of the environmental (nutrition), genetic and biochemical factors during fetal, neonatal, and early childhood life that play a role in defining the offspring phenotype and as risk determinants for non-communicable diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive functioning, and osteoporosis. Following a Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry from the University of Toronto in 1980, she completed postdoctoral training in endocrinology at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. Distinguished elected positions include a Governor-in-Council appointment to the inaugural Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), President of the American Society for Nutrition, and Chair of the Institute Advisory Board of the CIHR Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes. She has served as a member or chair of expert advisory panels from Health Canada, World Health Organization/Food & Agricultural Organization, and since 1995 with the National Academies in relation to various aspects of setting the Dietary Reference Intakes and subsequent projects; the process for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans; and feeding of infants and children from birth to 24 months. Dr. Atkinson was a Scientific Advisory Board Member of the Canadian company Jamieson Natural Resources from October 2021 to December 2021.
Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., is the director of the World Food Policy Center at Duke University, where he is also Robert L. Flowers Professor of Public Policy and professor of psychology and neuroscience. From 2013 to 2018 he served as dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke. Prior to joining Duke, he was on the faculty at Yale University for 23 years, holding a number of positions, including chair of the Department of Psychology, James Rowland Angell Professor of Psychology, professor of epidemiology and public health, and cofounder and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association, the Graduate Mentoring Award from Yale, the Distinguished Alumni Award from Purdue University, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Rutgers University, and the Distinguished Scientific Award for the Application of Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Brownell’s
work is in the area of food policy, food systems, obesity prevention, and the intersection of science and policy. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Purdue University in 1973 and a Ph.D. in psychology from Rutgers University in 1977.
Martha S. Field, Ph.D., is assistant professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. Her research focuses on understanding the complexity of gene–nutrient–environment interactions that affect cellular metabolism and on the biochemical mechanisms whereby perturbations in metabolism affect human health and disease. More specifically, Dr. Field uses in vitro and in vivo model systems to understand the contributions of folate and vitamin B12 nutrition to supporting mitochondrial DNA precursor synthesis, with a focus on understanding how folate nutrition affects mitochondrial DNA integrity and the pathogenesis of metabolic diseases such as mitochondrial DNA depletion syndromes, chronic disease, and age-related decline in mitochondrial function. Recently, her research has also focused on the metabolism of erythritol, which is a product of the pentose phosphate pathway and which has emerged as a predictive biomarker of cardiometabolic disease onset. Dr. Field received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology, in 2007 from Cornell University.
Sharon I. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., M.H.Sc., R.D., is associate professor in the School of Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Kirkpatrick’s research focuses on the intersections between nutrition, human and planetary health, equity, and policy, using a systems thinking lens. Much of her work is aimed at improving methodologies for measuring dietary patterns to foster robust evidence on how these patterns influence human and planetary health and how to promote healthy and sustainable eating practices. Dr. Kirkpatrick is a registered dietitian and holds a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences (2008) and an M.H.Sc. in Community Nutrition (2002) from the University of Toronto, a B.A.Sc. in Applied Human Nutrition (2000) from the University of Guelph, and a B.Kin. in Kinesiology (1996) from McMaster University. She was previously a visiting fellow at the National Cancer Institute and received two National Institutes of Health Awards of Merit for work related to dietary assessment. She is a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes Institute Advisory Board and the Health Canada Nutrition Science Advisory Committee, and she was an advisor to Health Canada for the revision of Canada’s Food Guide. Dr. Kirkpatrick has been involved in the development and validation of tools to assess the alignment of dietary intake with dietary guidance in the United States and Canada. She has published research
examining differential concordance of intake with guidance in relation to household food security, racial/ethnic identity, and income, as well as other publications focused on dietary assessment and eating patterns.
Bruce Y. Lee, M.D., M.B.A., is a systems modeler, computational and digital health expert, writer, and health journalist. He has more than two decades of experience in industry and academia developing mathematical and computational models to assist a wide range of decision makers in health and public health. Currently, he is a professor of health policy and management at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, where he is executive director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Communication in Health (CATCH) and PHICOR (Public Health Computational and Operations Research). Dr. Lee has written extensively for the general media as a Senior Contributor for Forbes and for a number of other media outlets, including the New York Times, Time, the Guardian, the HuffPost, STAT, and the MIT Technology Review. His publication on a systems approach to obesity was cited by the USDA’s 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Dr. Lee received his B.A. from Harvard University, his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He completed his internal medicine residency training at the University of California, San Diego.
Douglas A. Luke, Ph.D., is the Irving Louis Horowitz Professor in Social Policy at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the director of the Center for Public Health Systems Science (CPHSS), which has been active and funded for more than 20 years. His research focuses on the evaluation and implementation of evidence-based public health policies. He is also a leading methodologist with expertise in systems science, network analysis, agent-based modeling, and multilevel and longitudinal modeling. Based on a 2019 PLoS Biology bibliometric analysis, he has ranked in the top 1 percent of scientists in the world based on the number of highly cited papers. In 2014–2015, he was a member of the National Academy of Science panel that produced the consensus study Assessing the Use of Agent-based Models for Tobacco Regulation. He received his Ph.D. in community and clinical psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1990.
Esther F. Myers, Ph.D., R.D.N.., FAND, is an internationally known author, lecturer, educator, and researcher in dietetics and evidence analysis. Dr. Myers is also CEO of EF Myers Consulting and director of Nutrition Care Professionals, Pty., Ltd. She serves as an advisor to the Indian Institute of Nutrition Science and is an adjunct faculty for North
Dakota State University. Her consulting focuses on international practice-based research, evidence analysis, Nutrition Care Process and Model (NCPM), and Nutrition Care Process Terminology (NCPT). Dr. Myers was instrumental in the development of the Evidence Analysis Library and Evidence-Based Nutrition Practice Guidelines during her 11-year tenure as Chief Science Officer for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND). She served on several National Academy of Sciences committees: Committee on Military Nutrition, Committee on Nutrition Services for Medicare Beneficiaries, and Dietary Reference Intake Publication Working Group. Prior to working at AND from 2000 to 2013, Dr. Myers retired from the United States Air Force (USAF) after 25 years in dietetics. Her career culminated in serving as the Consultant to the USAF Surgeon General for Nutrition and Dietetics. Dr. Myers was named the 2020 recipient of the Marjorie Hulsizer Copher Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. Dr. Myers was a Governance Committee Member for the International Life Sciences Institute U.S. and Canada Research Program from February 2022 to June 2022. She received her B.S. in Food and Nutrition-Dietetics and Home Economics Education from North Dakota State University in 1975, her M.S. in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the Ohio State University in 1980, and her Ph.D. in Hospitality, Restaurant, Institutional Management and Dietetics from Kansas State University in 1989.
Emily Oken, M.D., M.P.H., is Alice Hamilton Professor and vice-chair in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, and professor in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Oken received her medical degree from HMS in 1996 and completed her internship and residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at the Harvard Combined Program. She completed her fellowship in general internal medicine at HMS and obtained her Master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Oken 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. She was a planning committee member for the National Academy of Medicine’s 2020 Workshop on Nutrition in Pregnancy. Dr. Oken 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.
José M. Ordovás, Ph.D., is professor of nutrition and a senior scientist at the USDA-Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, where he also is the Director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory. In addition, he is a Professor of Genetics and Pharmacology at the School of Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Ordovás was educated in Spain at the University of Zaragoza, where he completed his undergraduate work in chemistry and received his doctorate in biochemistry in 1982. He did postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Tufts University. Dr. Ordovás’s primary research interests focus on the genetic and epigenetic factors predisposing to age-related chronic diseases (i.e., cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes) and their interaction with environmental and behavioral factors with particular emphasis on diet. He is considered a pioneer and one of the most distinguished world experts in Precision Nutrition pertaining to cardiometabolic traits. Dr. Ordovás is a coauthor of the manuscript, Dietary Saturated Fats and Health: Are the U.S. Guidelines Evidence-Based?, to which he contributed his expertise in precision nutrition. Throughout his career, Dr. Ordovás has received multiple honors for his scientific achievements, including the Secretary’s Award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Centrum, the David Kritchevsky career achievement and Dannon Institute Mentorship awards from the American Society for Nutrition, the Gold Medal from the Spanish Society of Cardiology, and the Francisco Grande Award from the Mediterranean Diet Foundation. He has been awarded an honorary degree in Medicine bestowed by the University of Cordoba in Spain, and he is a Member of the Royal Academies of Sciences, Medicine, Nutrition, and Pharmacy in Spain. Dr. Ordovás has been a member of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies and the Food and Drug Administration National Toxicology Center Advisory Committee, and served on several National Academies committees, including the Committee on Nutrient Relationships in Seafood and the Committee on Food Allergies. He currently serves on multiple national and international steering committees, scientific peer-review committees, and advisory and editorial boards.
A. Catharine Ross, Ph.D., is professor of nutrition and physiology, holder of the Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair in Nutritional Sciences, and head of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State. Her areas of expertise are in micronutrient metabolism, especially related to vitamin A transport, intracellular metabolism, and functions in the immune system. She teaches graduate courses on micronutrients and public health. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society for Nutrition, and she is a member of the National Academy of Science. She has served on NIH study sections, as
a member and chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and on committees on Dietary Reference Intakes. She served on the committee for the National Academy of Medicine report Improving the Process for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2016–2018. Dr. Ross received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology, from Cornell University.
John B. Wong, M.D., is interim chief scientific officer, vice chair of clinical affairs, and a primary care physician at Tufts Medical Center, as well as a professor of medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine. After receiving his B.S. with honors from Haverford College and his M.D. from the University of Chicago, he completed postgraduate training in internal medicine and a National Library of Medicine sponsored medical informatics fellowship in Clinical Decision Making at Tufts Medical Center. A Master of the American College of Physicians, a past president of the Society for Medical Decision Making, an Associate Statistical Editor at the Annals of Internal Medicine, and a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, he has been a consultant to the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, European League Against Rheumatism, Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and others. In 2010, he organized and spoke at the NIH workshop Economic Analysis of Nutrition Interventions: Methods, Research and Policy, sponsored by the Office of Dietary Supplements and cosponsored by National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Cancer Institute, and National Institute of Nursing Research. With more than 250 publications to his name, his research focuses on the application of decision analysis to help patients, clinicians, and policy makers choose among alternative tests, treatments, or policies, thereby promoting rational evidence-based efficient and effective patient-centered care that reflects individualized risk assessment and patient preferences. For the National Academy of Science, he has been a chapter author in the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, 3rd edition; a committee member on diagnostic errors in medicine (published as Improving Diagnosis in Health Care); a reviewer for Hepatitis and Liver Cancer; a speaker and reviewer for sex-specific reporting of scientific research; a speaker at Observational Studies in a Learning Health System, and an invited attendee at the Evidence and the Individual Patient: Understanding Heterogeneous Treatment Effects event.
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