Community

Dr. Au's research is at the intersection of innovative dietary assessment, nutrition policy, and obesity prevention for low-income populations. Her work focuses on harnessing artificial intelligence to improve dietary assessment technology and examining how cross-utilization of safety net programs impacts nutrition security and health. She has a wealth of experience with evaluating nutrition policy changes in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children and the National School Lunch Program.

Dr. Engle-Stone's research is in global public health nutrition, with a focus on micronutrient nutrition among women and young children in low-income settings. Research themes include planning, monitoring, and evaluation of food fortification programs; cost-effectiveness and coherence among micronutrient intervention programs, and nutritional assessment.

Dr. Fetter teaches Nutrition 10V and Nutrition 10, in addition to conducting research on education and pedagogy. She is passionate about helping people, especially with guiding students to make healthier nutrition and lifestyle choices. She also aspires to help bridge the gap between the science community and general public through teaching and writing about nutrition in an engaging and relatable way.

Dr. Nguyen leads the Applied Community-Oriented Research in Nutrition (ACORN) Lab that focuses on practical ways to improve nutrition by aligning food programs, community food access, and household food practices to make healthy lifestyles attainable for more people.

Dr. Smilowitz has a well-established research career investigating the role of diet on the gut microbiome across the lifespan, with a particular focus on clinical nutrition and lactation during the first 1,000 days—from pregnancy through early childhood. As a Cooperative Extension Specialist with a background in lactation education, she leads collaborative, community-engaged outreach programs that support infant feeding and deliver evidence-based education on lactation and breastfeeding. Through integrated research and extension efforts, her work addresses critical gaps in health, strengthens community capacity, and advances strategies to reduce chronic disease risk.

Dr. Stewart’s research focuses on the design and evaluation of nutrition and health interventions for women and young children in low income communities. She examines the effects of these interventions on growth, health, and development throughout the life course. She utilizes primarily community-based randomized controlled trials, longitudinal studies, and meta-analyses to synthesize evidence to inform improvements in programs or policy. She collaborates extensively with multi-disciplinary and multi-national teams and has had recent projects in Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Bangladesh, and Ecuador.

Dr. Bonnel is the Human Studies Manager at the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Center (WHNRC). The mission of the WHNRC is to create and test food based interventions to improve the health of all Americans.

Dr. Caswell's research interests are in dietary assessment and analysis methods and food-based nutrition interventions. Her work incorporates nutritional epidemiology, community-based nutrition research and controlled dietary studies conducted at the Western Human Nutrition Research Center.

Dr. Haskell's research is focused on assessing the bioavailability of vitamin A from plant-based diets, and evaluating the efficacy and safety of vitamin A interventions in low-income countries.

Dr. Hess' research interests involve the design, implementation and evaluation of programs to control micronutrient deficiencies among children and women in low-income countries, and related issues of nutrient bioavailability, nutrient-nutrient interactions and nutritional assessment. The research program is generally carried out in the context of community-based intervention trials, using an efficacy or effectiveness study design.