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Janet and Gordon Lankton Professor, Division of Nutritional Sciences
Cornell University
I am a physician and an epidemiologist with expertise in nutrition, infectious disease, maternal and child health, and diagnostics. I am a faculty member in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, and serve on its executive leadership team, which is chaired by Professor Pat Cassano. Additionally, I also serve as the Director of the Program in International Nutrition. The central theme of my research is the interplay between nutrition and disease, including facilitating field-friendly assessment for both, and elucidating how nutrition can be used as a modifiable risk factor for improving health and associated outcomes, often in the context of pregnancy and early childhood. This is achieved through a combination of active surveillance programs, invention of point-of-care diagnostics, and randomized controlled trials primarily in resource-limited settings in India, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South America.
I am currently the Principal Investigator on two randomized efficacy trials to determine the effect of delivering micronutrients through biofortified crops on nutrition and the diversity and function of the gut microbiome in infants in India. I have also led or supported several randomized clinical trials focusing on nutritional interventions ranging from supplements to food prepared and delivered through centralized kitchens in diverse settings including clinics and hospitals, urban slums, schools, feeding programs, and within communities. I am the co-inventor of the Cornell NutriPhone and FeverPhone, a NSF- and NIH-funded platform for point-of-care diagnosis of nutritional status and infections. In Ecuador, I have been focusing on neglected tropical diseases such as dengue virus infection and am currently the Principal Investigator on an NIH R01 focusing on the development of FeverPhone, for differential diagnosis of acute febrile illnesses. This also leverages an active surveillance program for infectious disease that we have built in Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador.
I also serve as a consultant to the World Health Organization on topics such as tuberculosis, nutrition, and diagnostic test accuracy. In recent years, my team has helped synthesize evidence that has informed guidelines related to nutrition and infection such as infant feeding in the context of SARS-CoV2, Zika virus, and Ebola virus infections and I have served as the external expert on selected guideline development meetings. Additionally, we have created a living systematic review for COVID-19 in partnership with WHO to facilitate rapid revision of guidelines as new evidence emerges.