Appendix A

Committee Member Biographies

Stephanie A. Atkinson, Ph.D., D.Sc., FCAHS, FASN, FCNS (Chair), 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. Dr. Atkinson received her Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry from the University of Toronto and completed postdoctoral training in endocrinology at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). Her career-long research has focused on optimizing the health of infants and children, including investigating the factors influencing growth, body composition, and skeletal development in premature and term infants and children with growth and bone disorders secondary to pediatric diseases or drug therapy, such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia, epilepsy, and cystic fibrosis. Her research program encompasses randomized controlled 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 noncommunicable diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive functioning, and osteoporosis. 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, CIHR-appointed chair of its advisory board of the Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes (2009–2019), and elected chair and past chair of the board of directors of

the Maternal, Infant, Child, and Youth Health Research Network 2014–2018. She has served as member or chair of expert advisory panels for Health Canada, WHO/Food and Agriculture Organization, and grant review committees for CIHR, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the European Union Joint Program Initiative. Service to the National Academies since 1985 includes committees on various aspects of setting the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs), including the original Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes and chair of the first report of DRIs for Calcium, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Fluoride, and Vitamin D. More recently, she served as a member of Evaluating the Process to Develop the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020–2025; Feeding of Infants and Children from Birth to 24 Months; and the Standing Committee for the Review of the DRI Framework. Dr. Atkinson’s contributions to science and professional service have been recognized with many honors, including fellow in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, American Society for Nutrition, and Canadian Nutrition Society; a Governor General of Canada Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for dedicated service to her peers, community, and Canada; and a Doctorate of Science, honoris causa, from Western University and Brescia University College in 2016.

Steven A. Abrams, M.D., is a practicing board-certified neonatologist and professor of pediatrics at Dell Medical at the University of Texas at Austin. He was an associate editor of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and is editor-in-chief of Advances in Nutrition. He sits on the 2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and was on the 2015 committee. He has chaired the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Nutrition (CON) and participated in multiple committees of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that established Dietary Reference Intake values. His research focuses on infant nutrition and mineral metabolism in children. He is the author of articles related to infant feeding for AAP. He is the recipient of career research awards in pediatric nutrition from AAP and American Society for Nutrition.

Teresa A. Davis, Ph.D., is a professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Dr. Davis is internationally recognized for her studies on the nutritional regulation of skeletal muscle growth. Her work has been supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH, 1996–2027), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA; 1989–2024), and Abbott Nutrition (2011–2016), and she has served on numerous NIH grant review panels. Dr. Davis was a member of the U.S. 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

and served on both the USDA/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Infancy Working Group of the B-24 Project and the Scientific Steering Committee of the Pre-B Project. Dr. Davis was president of both the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) and American Society of Animal Science (ASAS). Her professional honors include the ASN Stockstad Award and fellow and the ASAS Animal Growth and Development Award, Morrison Award, and fellow. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Davis has served as editor in chief of the Journal of Nutrition (2014–2023) and Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition (2024–2027). She received her doctorate from the University of Tennessee and her postdoctoral training from Washington University School of Medicine.

Rajavel Elango, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is also an investigator at the Research Institute, BC Children’s Hospital, Vancouver. Dr. Elango’s research program focuses on identification of dietary requirements for protein and amino acids (AAs) and protein quality of foods in key stages of growth and development, such as pregnancy and lactation; childhood malnutrition; and inborn errors of metabolism using state-of-the-art stable isotope techniques. Dr. Elango is a deputy editor for the British Journal of Nutrition and a section editor for the Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care. He is a member of the American Society of Nutrition (ASN) and vice president (research) for the Canadian Nutrition Society. Dr. Elango was part of the 2020 National Academies Expert Workshop on Nutrition During Pregnancy and Lactation: Exploring New Evidence. Dr. Elango has been part of the United National Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) 2014 and 2017 Expert Working Group on protein quality of foods and a recent 2022 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Expert Meeting on “Assessment of Protein Requirements and Protein Quality and for the Development of a Protein Digestibility and Quality Database.”

Shibani Ghosh, Ph.D., M.S., is a research associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and the associate director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Feed the Future Food Systems for Nutrition Innovation Lab. She is the principal investigator (PI) of the Jordan Nutrition Innovation Lab and the One Nutrition in Complex Environments study in Uganda, with over 20 years of research experience in the Middle East, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research is on formulating and implementing community-based randomized interventions targeting women, infants, and young children with a focus on integrated maternal-infant health programs,

fortification, supplementation, cystic fibrosis (CF) supplements, protein quality, and amino acids (AAs). She has published extensively on the role of protein and AAs and nondietary factors, such as environmental enteric dysfunction, water, hygiene and sanitation, aflatoxins, and mycotoxins, in supporting or impeding optimal growth of infants and young children. She has also designed and implemented several longitudinal birth cohort studies examining the maternal-infant life cycle and identifying intervention actions for program and policy recommendation. Dr. Ghosh is the interim cochair of the Global Nutrition Report, chair of the Council of USAID Feed the Future Innovation Labs, an expert on the FAO Scientific Advisory Committee on the contribution of livestock to food security nutrition and healthy diets and Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project, and a technical advisory board member of the Food Safety Innovation Lab at Purdue University. She has served on FAO’s expert working group on protein quality assessment in follow-up formula for young children and ready-to-use therapeutic foods.

James D. House,¹ Ph.D., was full professor and the Manitoba Strategic Research Chair in Sustainable Protein in the Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. He completed his Ph.D. in amino acid (AA) nutrition and metabolism from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 1996. His research program has advanced understanding of factors affecting the use of plant- and animal-based protein sources in the human diet, including in vivo and in vitro digestibility protocols for protein and AAs. His research program has trained over 40 graduate students, 16 postdoctoral fellows and research associates, and over 40 undergraduate research assistants. He was a fellow of the Canadian Nutrition Society, served as its president (2018), and earned awards from it and the Canadian Society of Animal Science. He has also received awards for merit and administrative service from the University of Manitoba. Dr. House was a member of the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences board of trustees. His research program was funded via NSERC Discovery Grants and numerous tripartite programs involving industry and government partners.

Daniel Roth, MD, Ph.D., is a clinician-scientist and associate professor in the Division of Pediatric Medicine, Department of Pediatrics at SickKids and University of Toronto (Canada). Dr. Roth is a practicing physician in pediatric medicine at SickKids and a senior scientist at its Research Institute and the Centre for Global Child Health and holds appoint-

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¹ James D. House passed away during completion of the study.

ments in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Dalla School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Roth received his M.D. in 2002 from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), completed a pediatric residency (2006) and M.Sc. (2006) at the University of Alberta (Edmonton), and has a Ph.D. (2011) in international health and human nutrition from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Baltimore, Maryland). Dr. Roth’s research focuses on maternal and child nutrition, including micronutrients and early-childhood linear growth faltering and infectious diseases in lower-income settings. He conducted studies of the effect of vitamin D in pregnancy and lactation on maternal and child health outcomes and is leading an international collaborative study of the early neonatal microbiome and infant sepsis in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Dr. Roth is also engaged in research to develop new epidemiological approaches for assessing population-level childhood linear growth patterns in low- and middle-income countries and of probiotic and synbiotic regimens in newborns.

John C. Wallingford, Ph.D., is an independent consultant, operating since 2011 as Nutrispectives, LLC. His area of expertise includes the regulatory and nutrition science aspects of foods for special dietary uses, such as infant formula and ingredients used therein, including generally recognized as safe notifications for novel ingredients. Dr. Wallingford was vice president of scientific affairs at Pfizer Nutrition and vice president of regulatory, government, and scientific affairs at Wyeth Nutrition, where he led product registrations and approvals, ingredient approvals, comments to regulatory rulemaking, and clinical and nutritional research. Earlier, Dr. Wallingford was acting director of the Division of Technical Evaluation, Office of Food Labeling at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and also served in its Office of Special Nutritionals, where he was a senior scientific reviewer for foods for special dietary purposes and author of health claims rules. As an independent contributor, he has commented on FDA proposed regulations related to nutrition labeling and infant formula quality factors; Good Manufacturing Practices and Guidance on Medical Foods and Investigational New Drug Applications for Nutrition Research; and Substantiation of Structure Function Claims on Infant Formulas. He authored the chapter “Federal Regulations of Foods and Infant Formulas, Including New Ingredients: Food Additives and Substances Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)” in Pediatric Nutrition Handbook, 9th ed. American Association of Pediatrics.

Xiaobin Wang, D.Sc., M.P.H., M.D., is the Zanvyl Krieger Professor and founding director of the Center on the Early Life Origins of Disease,

Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Wang’s research bridges molecular biomarkers, clinical medicine, epidemiology, and public health using a life course approach. She initiated and was the principal investigator (PI) of Boston Birth Cohort (BBC) since 1998. BBC, funded continuously by NIH for over two decades, consists of ~8,700 mother–child dyads from U.S. urban low-income minority populations, aiming to investigate a broad array of psychosocial, environmental, nutritional, and genetic factors and their interactions to advance understanding of child growth and development and the root causes of pediatric and adult diseases and health disparities. Dr. Wang is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. She received her M.D. from Beijing Medical University and Sc.D. from Johns Hopkins University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard and pediatric residency at Boston Medical Center.