About Us

Dr. Siega-Riz’s research focuses on the first 1,000 days of life by understanding the influence of maternal nutritional status (e.g. weight status, dietary patterns, and food/eating behaviors) in the etiology of various pregnancy outcomes, including but not limited to, gestational diabetes, preterm birth, neonatal size, and inadequate or excessive gestational weight gain as well as early childhood health outcomes such as childhood obesity, and neurocognitive and metabolic outcomes. She has been involved in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded Hispanic Community Health Study/Salude of Latinos Cohort in the U.S. since 2007. Other research interests include examining the determinants and consequences of food insecurity and the implications of food policy on health outcomes.

Dr. Siega-Riz currently serves on the NIH’s Council of Councils, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Health and Medicine Division Advisory Committee, the Food and Nutrition Board, and as a board of trustees member for the International Food Information Council. She chaired the Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy for the National Academy of Medicine, Food and Nutrition Board and has previously she served on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Federal Advisory Committee; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Advisory Council; the U.S. Department of Agriculture/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Pregnancy Technical Expert Committee, B–24-month Project; as well as many other Institute of Medicine committees. Dr. Siega-Riz has received several accolades for her work including the March of Dimes Agnes Higgins Award for Maternal and Fetal Nutrition and the American Public Health Association, Food and Nutrition Mary Egan Award. She held key positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Public Health, including Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Program Leader of the Reproductive, Perinatal and Pediatric Program in the Department of Epidemiology and at the University of Virginia as the Associate Dean for Research in the School of Nursing. 

Dr. Siega-Riz holds a B.S.P.H. from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, an M.S. (Master of Science). in Food, Nutrition, and Food Service Management from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in Nutrition with a minor in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health. She held the credentials of a registered dietician from 1983–2014.