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Assistant Professor
University of Utah and Huntsman Cancer Institute
Dr. Mary Playdon, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology and an Investigator in Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. She completed her doctoral studies in Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Yale University, and her postdoctoral studies in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute. Dr. Playdon's research focuses on the role of modifiable lifestyle factors like diet and obesity in the development of cancer and survival after cancer diagnosis. With her collaborators, she has done cutting-edge research on developing dietary biomarkers using metabolomics to improve dietary measurement, and understand the mechanisms underlying dietary relationships with disease. Her program at the University of Utah focuses on studying the interface of diet with human metabolism and cancer by conducting molecular epidemiology studies, and testing dietary strategies including unique dietary patterns and meal timing modification for improving metabolic health in individuals at elevated risk for obesity-related cancer and among endometrial, breast, and colorectal cancer survivors.