B

Speaker and Moderator Biographies

Elie A. Akl, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.D., is a tenured professor of medicine at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He serves as the associate dean for clinical research at the Faculty of Medicine, leads the division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at the American University of Beirut (AUB) Medical Center, directs the AUB GRADE Center, and codirects the Center for Systematic Reviews of Health Policy and Systems Research. He has a part-time appointment in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact at McMaster University. His research expertise is in systematic reviews, practice guidelines, and conflicts of interest. He serves as a guideline methodologist for several North American professional organizations and the World Health Organization. He has published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers and has been listed as a one of the “Highly Cited Researchers” yearly since 2015.

Karima Benkhedda, Ph.D., is the head of the Nutrition Quality and Safety Section in the Bureau of Nutritional Sciences, Food Directorate at Health Canada. Since joining Health Canada in 2005, Dr. Benkhedda has worked in several areas, including nutrition research, nutrition premarket assessment of supplemented foods, novel foods, food additives, fibers, and health claim substantiation. She has been extensively involved in policy and regulatory work related to supplemented foods and health claims and developing guidance on scientific requirements for health claim substantiation. Dr. Benkhedda conducted and used systematic reviews and meta-analyses in the context of food health claim review and approval and for developing guidance, policy, and regulations. She is a core member of the NuQuest

Working Group that developed risk of bias assessment tools for nutrition studies. Dr. Benkhedda has also contributed to international nutrition policy, including the Dietary Reference Intakes Nomination Process and the Codex Alimentarius Commission for the development of international food standards. She received the 2022 Assistant Deputy Minister’s Award for Excellence in Science and the 2015 Assistant Deputy Minister’s Award for Transparency and Openness.

Joseph Beyene, Ph.D., is a professor of biostatistics and the inaugural John D. Cameron Endowed Chair in the Genetic Determinants of Chronic Diseases, Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact, McMaster University, Canada. He obtained his Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of Toronto. Dr. Beyene’s research interests focus on methodology development for evidence synthesis with application to public health sciences and clinical medicine; integrative statistical methods for high-dimensional data with emphasis on “multi-omics” studies; and general statistical methods for clinical trials and observational study designs. His scientific and clinical application areas span a wide range of disciplines, including maternal-child health, nutrition, and rheumatology. He has authored or coauthored more than 350 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters across the areas of his training and research interest. In addition to maintaining an active methodological research program, Dr. Beyene is also involved in mentorship and supervision at various levels.

Emma Boyland, Ph.D., is a professor of food marketing and child health based in the Department of Psychology at the University of Liverpool, where she is research lead for the department and leads the Appetite and Obesity Research group. As an experimental psychologist, her work principally focuses on the food environment, characterizing the foods and beverages available, how they are marketed, and how these factors impact eating behaviors (particularly in children). She has extensive experience of knowledge translation and exchange, supporting use of evidence to inform policy progress in the United Kingdom and internationally. Dr. Boyland is an established global leader in her research field and has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles to date, as well as multiple World Health Organization reports and book chapters. She has received more than £4 million in research funding to her institution from funders, including the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Medical Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust.

Mei Chung, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy of Tufts University. Before her transition to the university, Dr. Chung was an assistant director of the Agency

for Healthcare Research and Quality–designated Evidence-based Practice Center at Tufts Medical Center. She has more than a decade of experience in conducting rigorous evidence synthesis across wide ranges of health questions. She also has expertise in developing new methods and adapting existing methods of evidence synthesis to enable or facilitate the translation of evidence to policy. Dr. Chung holds a Ph.D. in nutritional epidemiology from Tufts University and an M.P.H. from Boston University.

Russell Jude de Souza, Sc.D., R.D., is a registered dietitian and associate professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact at McMaster University. His nutritional epidemiology research program addresses the role of diet in chronic disease prevention throughout the lifespan, methodological issues related to study design, evidence synthesis and quality of evidence, and developing and applying state-of-the-art and established approaches to assessing food/diet-health associations. His methodological expertise has been recognized by local, national, and international health organizations, including service as an external resource person to the World Health Organization’s Nutrition Guidelines Advisory Committee, appointment to the Nutrition Science Advisory Committee (Health Canada), a co-opted member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition Subgroup on the Framework for the Evaluation of Evidence (Public Health England), and chairs the methodology group of the Precision Medicine in Diabetes Initiative (American Diabetes Association). He has more than 180 lifetime publications, including several in high-impact general medical journals, such as BMJ, JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, Circulation, and Annals of Internal Medicine; and high-impact nutrition journals, such as Advances in Nutrition, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Current Developments in Nutrition, and Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. He has a cumulative h-index of 59 through 2023. He is a member of the Canadian Nutrition Society, American Society for Nutrition, the College of Dietitians of Ontario, and Dietitians of Canada. He holds a B.A. from Queen’s University (1996), bachelor of applied science in foods and nutrition from Toronto Metropolitan University (1999), an M.S. in nutritional sciences from the University of Toronto (2005), and an Sc.D. from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (2011). He completed his graduate dietetic internship at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Ontario (2000).

Sarah Gebauer, Ph.D., is a nutritionist in the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She works in the Nutrition Science Review Branch where she reviews the scientific evidence related to nutrition labeling and label claims (e.g., health claims, nutrient content claims). Dr. Gebauer helped implement the FDA regulatory definition of dietary fiber and reviews

the evidence to determine whether isolated or synthetic nondigestible carbohydrates meet the regulatory definition of dietary fiber. She is a member of the U.S.-Canada Joint Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) Working Group involved with the process to update the DRIs for energy, protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Prior to joining FDA, Dr. Gebauer worked at the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, Agricultural Research Service, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where she conducted highly controlled dietary interventions to investigate the relationship between food/food components and risk of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. She received a B.S. in biology and a Ph.D. in molecular medicine, both from Penn State University.

Lee Hooper, Ph.D., R.D., is a reader in research synthesis, nutrition, and hydration in the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia and has a B.Sc. in biochemistry, Ph.D. (University of Manchester), and is a registered dietitian. She worked as a dietitian in the National Health Service for 10 years, with extensive experience of community health promotion and cardiovascular health. Dr. Hooper moved to research in 2000 and has since published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, mainly in the areas of dehydration and nutrition of older people and the effects of dietary change on health. Her publications have been cited more than 30,000 times with an h-index of 82. Dr. Hooper has a long-term interest in the nutrition and hydration of older people. She is an expert systematic reviewer and has developed and managed numerous systematic reviews. Dr. Hooper was an editor for the Cochrane Heart Group for 14 years, was an editor of the Cochrane Oral Health Group for 5 years, and regularly referees systematic reviews for top medical and nutrition journals.

Andrew Jones, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in psychology at Liverpool John Moores University. He is an experimental psychologist with a wider interest in meta-science and evidence syntheses. His research focuses on the antecedents and consequences of unhealthy behaviors, such as alcohol use and poor dietary choices. He has received early career awards from the British Association for Psychopharmacology and Society for the Study of Addiction. He has authored more than 100 journal articles and received funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Economic and Social Research Council, and Public Health England.

Amanda J. MacFarlane, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Agriculture, Food, and Nutrition Evidence Center and Professor of Nutrition at Texas A&M University (2022–present). Her research examines the impact of B-vitamin nutrition on health spanning the molecular mechanisms underpinning genome stability to the identification of socioeconomic, dietary,

and genetic determinants of population nutritional status. She is a member of the NuQuest Working Group that developed critical appraisal tools for nutrition studies. While a research scientist at Health Canada (2008–2022), she chaired the Canada—U.S. Joint Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) Working Group (2013–2022), during which time chronic disease endpoints were formally included in the DRIs framework, the sodium and potassium DRIs were reviewed, and a review of macronutrient requirements was initiated. She is actively involved in policy work related to food fortification, food labeling, and vitamin supplements. She is an associate editor of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and member-at-large for food and nutrition policy of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Nutrition. She received the 2022 Assistant Deputy Minister’s Award for Excellence in Science, the 2017 Deputy Minister’s Award for Excellence in Science, and the 2015 Assistant Deputy Minister’s Award for Transparency and Openness. Dr. MacFarlane received her B.Sc. in biology and biotechnology from Carleton University in 2000 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Ottawa in 2004. Dr. MacFarlane is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation–funded Micronutrient International project “Development and Market Introduction of Iodine-Folic Acid Fortified Salt (DFS-IoFA) in Ethiopia” from 2023 to present. Dr. MacFarlane serves in uncompensated roles as a guest member of the World Health Organization Obesity Technical Working Group from 2022 to present; the Director-at-Large of Food and Nutrition Policy, American Society for Nutrition Board of Directors from 2021 to present; a member of the European Food Safety Authority Expert Panel for hazard identification of folate/folic acid in 2021; the chair of the Joint Canada-U.S. Dietary Reference Intakes Working Group from 2013–2022; a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations 2022 from 2019 to present; and member of the Canadian Nutrition Society Ethics Committee from 2018 to present. She has served as an associate editor for The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition since 2018.

Vasanti Malik, Sc.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Chronic Disease Prevention. Dr. Malik’s research uses a combination of epidemiological studies, clinical trials, and evidence synthesis to evaluate dietary and lifestyle determinants of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases in different populations and across the life course. Dr. Malik’s research also includes studying the intersection of diet, health, and environmental sustainability with the goal of informing dietary guidance and public policies to prevent chronic diseases and promote more sustainable food systems.

M. Hassan Murad, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic with a career focus on improving the methods of evidence synthesis, translation and integration in practice, policy, and guidelines. He directs the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality–designated Evidence-based Practice Center at the Mayo Clinic, the fellowship program in preventive medicine and public health, and the master’s program in translational research. He is a cofounder of the US-GRADE Network, has more than 950 scientific publications, and participated in more than 80 national/international practice guidelines.

Celeste Naude, Ph.D., M.Nutr., R.D., is an associate professor and chief researcher at the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care, Department of Global Health, Stellenbosch University, South Africa (SA); and codirector of Cochrane Nutrition. Her academic interests and experience include health and nutrition evidence synthesis and evidence-informed decision making in policy and practice for improving nutrition, health, and other sustainable development outcomes. Dr. Naude is involved in producing systematic reviews and other evidence syntheses for the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) guideline development processes. She also serves as a member of the WHO Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group Subgroup on Policy Actions, and as a guideline methodologist for WHO nutrition guidelines. She is involved in international, regional, and national research and policy partnerships and networks. She leads the nutrition focus area of the Research, Evidence and Development Initiative, funded by UK aid from the UK government, and the evidence synthesis work package for the Global Evidence, Local Adaptation project in South Africa, funded by European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership, which focuses on newborn and child health guidelines in South Africa, Malawi, and Nigeria. Dr. Naude has served on the South Africa Ministerial Committee on Mortality and Morbidity in Children, as an associate editor of the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group, as cochair of the Cochrane Council and Fields Executive, and as a member of the WHO/Cochrane Working Group. She is a member of the South Africa Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation Network and on the Advisory Group for the Enabling sustainable public engagement in improving health and health equity (IHC CHOICE) project, led by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Sydne J. Newberry, Ph.D., has served as a project lead, literature reviewer, and medical editor for the Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center, formerly based at the RAND Corporation, since 2000. She has conducted and participated in evidence reviews in the areas of nutrition

and metabolism, endocrinology, military health, integrative medicine, and other areas of clinical medicine. Topics of recent reviews have included the health effects of dietary sodium and potassium, the effects of omega-3 fatty acids in maternal and child health, the effects of omega-3 fatty acids in treating major depressive disorder, the health effects of vitamin D, and the comparative effectiveness of treatments for low bone density and osteoporosis—all conducted for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality or the Department of Defense. Prior to joining RAND, she was a nutrition instructor and project manager for the Department of Community Health Sciences in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Public Health, managing the editing and revision of a nutrition encyclopedia for consumers and a reproductive nutrition guide for healthcare providers. Prior to joining UCLA, she was a project officer for the Institute of Medicine/Food and Nutrition Board/Committee on Military Nutrition Research of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Newberry has also held academic and research positions at the Ohio State University (OSU) and the Fels Research Institute/Wright State University School of Medicine (Dayton, Ohio) and has worked as a clinical nutritionist in hospital-based weight management clinics. She received her Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry and metabolism (minor in neuroendocrinology) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral work in molecular and cellular biology and plant virology at OSU.

Chizuru Nishida, Ph.D., after serving as the coordinator (head) of Nutrition Policy and Scientific Advice Unit of the World Health Organization (WHO) Department of Nutrition for Health and Development for 10 years, served as the Head of the Cross-Cutting Unit of Safe, Healthy and Sustainable Diet at the newly merged WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety from 2020 to 2023. She continued to lead the development of WHO guidance and scientific advice on diet, nutrition, and health before she retired at the end of February 2023 from WHO, where she worked for almost 36 years at all three levels (global, regional, and county level) of the Organization. Dr. Nishida also served as the head of a WHO delegation at the Codex Committees on Nutrition and Food for Special Dietary Uses and Food Labelling for the last 20 years, leading and ensuring policy coherence in the development of Codex standards and guidelines not only to protect food safety but also to improve food quality to address increasing global public health problems of obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases. During 2019–2023, she served as the chair of the Cochrane Nutrition Advisory Board, which guided the work and strategic direction of Cochrane Nutrition. She received the Asia Pacific Clinical Nutrition Society Award for 2023. Dr. Nishida holds a Ph.D. in nutrition science and an M.A. in medical anthropology.

Crystal Rivers, M.S., is a nutritionist in the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She is a member of the Nutrition Science Review Branch that is responsible for the premarket review of scientific evidence for health claims. She also works on issues related to the Nutrition Facts label. Prior to joining FDA in 2005, Rivers worked as a research associate at the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board on the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). She was also an extension agent with Virginia Cooperative Extension, where she taught educational programs in nutrition and food safety. Rivers holds a B.S. and an M.S. in human nutrition, foods and exercise from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).

Christopher Schmid, Ph.D., is professor of biostatistics and founding member of the Center for Evidence Synthesis in Health in the Brown School of Public Health at Brown University. Dr. Schmid also directs the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design Core of Advance-RI Clinical and Translational Research and the Evidence Synthesis Academy. His research focuses on methods and applications for meta-analysis, particularly Bayesian methods and software on predictive models derived from combining data from different sources and on clinical trials, particularly N-of-1 trials, and single person multiple crossover studies. Dr. Schmid received his Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University.

Barbara O. Schneeman, Ph.D., is emeritus professor of nutrition at the University of California, Davis. From 2004 to 2013 she was the director of the Office of Nutrition, Labeling, and Dietary Supplements at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. She chaired the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and served on the 1990 and 1995 Committees. She is a member of two nutrition advisory committees for the World Health Organization and a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board. Dr. Schneeman has received several awards and has been recognized for her work on dietary fiber, gastrointestinal function, development and use of food-based dietary guidelines, and policy development in food and nutrition. She is a fellow of the American Society for Nutrition and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Janet A. Tooze, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science, Division of Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She is a biostatistician with expertise in statistical methods in nutrition, focused on dietary assessment and measurement error. She has developed methods for estimating the usual intake

of foods and nutrients in a unified framework, termed the NCI Method, the foundation of which is a statistical model developed by Dr. Tooze for repeated measures data with excess zeroes. This method is used internationally to characterize population intakes of foods and nutrients and for risk assessment. Dr. Tooze received an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. She was a member of the 2017–2019 Committee to Review the Dietary Intakes for Sodium and Potassium and the 2021–2022 Committee to Review the Dietary Intakes for Energy for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She led the statistical validation of the Healthy Eating Index-2015, a widely used diet quality index, and the Total Nutrient Index. She has received three National Institutes of Health Merit Awards in recognition of her work in the advancement of dietary assessment.

Katherine L. Tucker, Ph.D., is University Distinguished Professor of Nutritional Epidemiology in the Department of Biomedical and Nutrition Sciences and director of the Center for Population Health, at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She holds an adjunct appointment at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Before joining UMass Lowell, she was at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and McGill University. Dr. Tucker has contributed to more than 450 articles in scientific journals. Her research focuses on dietary intake and risk of chronic disease, including osteoporosis, cognitive decline, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and heart disease with an emphasis on health disparities. She is the principal investigator of the Boston Puerto Rican Health Study, an ongoing cohort study, to examine the roles of diet, health behaviors, stress, and genetic predisposition in relation to chronic conditions, including heart disease, cognitive decline, and bone health. She is actively involved as a scientific advisor for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Jackson Heart Study and served two terms on the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She is a fellow of the American Society for Nutrition (ASN), the Gerontological Society of America, and the American Society for Bone Mineral Research. She is currently the editor-in-chief of Advances in Nutrition, the international review journal of the ASN and senior editor of the forthcoming 12th edition of the textbook Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Connecticut, both in nutritional sciences.

George A. Wells, Ph.D., M.Sc., is a professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa and director of the Cardiovascular Research Methods Centre at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He is also a professor in the Department of Medicine at the

University of Ottawa. His research interests are in the design and analysis of clinical trials, health technology assessment, statistical methodology related to health care delivery, systematic reviews and meta-analysis, economic evaluations, and the development and assessment of decision support technologies for patients and practitioners. Dr. Wells is the author or coauthor of more than 900 peer-reviewed articles and more than 1,000 scientific abstracts. He has been the principal investigator or co-investigator on more than 310 research projects.