nutrition data summit Oct 4-6, 2018
Note from Summit Chairs Dear Nutrition Data Summit 2018 Attendee, Thank you for joining us for the inaugural, student-led 2018 Nutrition Data Summit at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. This three-day event is designed to start discussions on several important issues that will shape the future of the multidisciplinary nutrition field. Like all other disciplines, nutrition currently faces the challenge of exponentially increasing computational capabilities and data volumes. The impact of big data in this field is broad, and reaches several billion people through nutrition programming, interventions, and food systems modeling. Our careers in nutrition will be determined by how we creatively utilize big data to improve health outcomes and policy. Our goals for the Nutrition Data Summit are to: CONNECT students, practitioners, and experts in nutrition-related disciplines to build a nutrition data science network COORDINATE research and perspectives of nutrition students, practitioners, and experts COLLABORATE on solutions to nutrition-specific challenges, and establish platforms for continued discussions on nutrition data sciences by developing strategies to unify the efforts of data harvesters, data translators, and data interpreters CREATE solutions through student-driven engagement and entrepreneurship Through this approach, we hope to allow those well-versed in nutrition to understand and practice rigorous data science in their work, and invite those competent in data analytics to explore the intersectional discipline of nutrition, and find solutions to seemingly intractable problems. This event is thus not a solution, but a starting point. We hope you hear about the methodological complexities of rigorous data analysis with varied data sources, as well as the real-world challenges and controversies in interdisciplinary nutrition practice. We plan to continue the ideas and skills developed during this event to further this emerging field. We hope you will join us in this journey, and share your feedback online or in person to help improve future iterations of the Nutrition Data Summit. Sincerely,
The Nutrition Data Summit Student Planning Committee Ryan Simpson, Co-Chair MS ‘19, Nutrition Data Science
Aishwarya Venkat, Co-Chair PhD ’20, Agriculture, Food, & Environment
Keynote Speaker Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, Jean Mayer Professor of Nutrition and Medicine, and Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Dr. Mozaffarian has served in numerous advisory roles including for the US and Canadian governments, American Heart Association, Global Burden of Diseases study, World Health Organization, and United Nations. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Time Magazine, and many other outlets.
Plenary Speakers Dr. Simin Meydani serves as the Vice Provost for Research at Tufts University, working to develop and implement strategic research priorities at Tufts. She oversees pre-award and non-fiscal post -award development and administration of grants and contracts; protection, management, and licensing of the University’s intellectual property; the use of human subjects and laboratory animals in research; and the implementation of the University’s policies on conflict of interest in research and misconduct in research and scholarship. Dr. Elena N. Naumova is the Chair of the Division of Nutrition Data Science, as well as a Professor at the Friedman School. Her research activities span a broad range of programs in emerging and reemerging diseases, environmental epidemiology, molecular biology, nutrition, and growth. Her primary expertise is in development of analytical tools for spatio-temporal and longitudinal data analysis applied to disease surveillance, exposure assessment, and studies of growth; creation and application of statistical tools to evaluate the influence of an extreme and/or intermediate event on spatial and temporal patterns.
Student Planning Committee Ryan Simpson is a second year Masters student in the Nutrition Data Sciences division at Friedman. As part of the Tufts Initiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Diseases (InForMID), Ryan works on forecasting infectious and foodborne diseases as well as humanitarian emergencies on a research grant with the US Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). His work utilizes time series analysis approaches to model features of infectious diseases and applies these techniques to foodborne illnesses and complex emergencies. Aishwarya Venkat is a doctoral student in Agriculture, Food, & Environment at Friedman. Her research involves identification of spatiotemporal patterns in complex events, and integrating disparate datasets to derive spatial solutions at the local, national, and agroecosystem scales. She is part of the Tufts Initiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Diseases (InForMID) team, and is currently using time series methods and machine learning approaches to forecast influenza and famine. Yi Zhao is a second-year master’s student in Nutritional Epidemiology at Friedman with a substantial research interest in diet and cognition. Currently, she is using machine learning methods to link complex dietary factors as a mixture with health outcomes including cardiovascular diseases and cognitive impairment among the elderly population.
Panelists Lindsey Anna is a public health and international development adviser with over 10 years of experience designing, implementing, and monitoring food security and nutrition programs. She joined USAID's Bureau for Food Security in October 2014 as a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Specialist supporting President Obama's Feed the Future Initiative. Anna works with USAID missions and implementing partners on effective results-based management, strategic planning, metrics development, and methods research and evaluation. Lauren Betz is currently the Head of Customer Success at Food for All, a startup that aims to reduce food waste by matching users to unsold meals from local restaurants at a discounted price. She has a social entrepreneurship background working for Cignifi, a startup improving financial inclusion through alternative data. She is passionate about sustainability and involvement with food recovery non-profits and other early-stage startups. Dr. Gil Blander is internationally recognized for his research in the biology of aging, and developing new ways of detecting and preventing age-related conditions. He leads a team of biology, nutrition, exercise physiology experts, and computer scientists at InsideTracker. The InsideTracker platform analyzes key biochemical and physiological markers to provide nutrition, exercise, supplements and lifestyle interventions to empower people to optimize their markers, improving health, vitality, and athletic performance.
Erin Boyd has over ten years of experience in emergency nutrition response policy, program management, monitoring and evaluation, and operational research. She has lived and worked in ten countries with NGOs, UNICEF and USAID. Erin provided technical support for emergency nutrition interventions in Darfur and Ethiopia. She also served as Nutrition Cluster Coordinator in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and worked with UNICEF in Pakistan following the 2010 floods. Erin’s expertise is in the management and prevention of acute malnutrition through community-based methods and improved infant and young child feeding practices.
Panelists Gerard Bridi serves as CEO of NutriSavings, an educational incentive-based employee nutrition program. NutriSavings partners with produce growers, food & beverage companies, supermarkets, employers, and payers, to make healthy grocery shopping easier and affordable. Gerard has worked for over 25 years in benefits, corporate services, and business process outsourcing, with a focus on nutrition and healthcare in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. Dr. Kenneth Chui is a methodologist with expertise in research design, data analysis, and innovative data visualization. His current research includes the evaluation of physical activity and nutrition interventions for children, epidemics in the US including opioid overdoses and hepatitis C infections, and testing the effectiveness of food aid formulas to combat and prevent childhood wasting. His past work is wide-ranging in terms of topics— from electrical signals in muscle fibers to US weather systems; scale—from 20 participants to more than 200 million medical billing records; and geography—from US health care delivery systems to multi-country randomized controlled trials. Dr. Avery Cohn is dedicated to producing scientific evidence addressing and coping with environmental change to inform governance. His research focuses on the future of agriculture and forests in a changing climate in developing countries. Avery’s research involves the study of interactions between earth systems, human behavior, and institutions. He has worked on topics including the governance of deforestation, sustainable intensification and pest control, food loss reduction, resilience of diversified farming systems, and the value forests for the natural resource economy via climate regulation.
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Rachel Colchamiro is the Director of Nutrition Services for the State of Massachusetts. Rachel has published several studies on community and programmatic breastfeeding support based on the Massachusetts Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. She also conducts research on childhood obesity prevention as part of the Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration (CORD) project, in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health. Rachel additionally serves as the Nutrition Coordinator for the National WIC Association in Massachusetts.
Panelists Dr. Christina Economos is a Professor and the New Balance Chair in Childhood Nutrition at the Friedman School and Tufts Medical School. She is also the coFounder and Director of ChildObesity180, an organization that unites leaders from business, government, and the nonprofit sector to tackle the childhood obesity epidemic. As the principal investigator of several large-scale research studies, Dr. Economos’ goal is to inspire behavior, policy, and environmental change to reduce obesity and improve the health of America’s children. Her Shape Up Somerville, Live Well, and CHANGE studies have established the value of community based interventions in improving nutrition and food-related behaviors. Patrick Florance is the Director of Academic Data Services and a Lecturer at The Fletcher School. He is also the Director of the Open Geoportal project. Patrick directs all geospatial, visualization, statistics, and digital humanities technology services at Tufts. Patrick has worked as a project manager and senior geospatial consultant on various projects involving international health, natural resources, and disasters for over 10 years. His current research interests include international mapping, spatial data infrastructure analytics, and geospatial humanities. Jimena Florez is a social entrepreneur and founder of Chaak Healthy Snacks, a food science company that develops ready-to-eat snacks engineered with nutrients to improve brain performance. Jimena has also pioneered an academic program in her native country of Colombia, to empower farmers by educating them about food safety and organic production and biocomponents. Her work engages governments, universities and communities, with strategies aimed at changing children’s food habits and improving learning. Dr. Shibani Ghosh is a public health nutritionist with over 15 years of experience in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. She is the Associate Director for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Nutrition at Tufts, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Friedman, and a Senior Scientist at the Nevin Scrimshaw International Nutrition Foundation. Dr. Ghosh works on agriculture-nutrition linkages, biological, diet, and non-diet determinants of stunting in infants and young children, and improving the protein and micronutrient quality of complementary foods.
Panelists Dr. Joseph Gormley is the Director of Advanced Systems Development at the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
Dr. Timothy Griffin is the director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment program, and an associate professor at the Friedman School. His primary interests are the intersection of agriculture and the environment, and the development and implementation of sustainable production systems. Griffin's current research is focused on the environmental impacts of agriculture, and impacts of policy on adoption of agricultural practices and systems. His past research includes crop management, manure nitrogen and phosphorus availability, soil carbon sequestration and cycling, and emission of greenhouse gases from high-value production systems. Dr. Robert Houser is a quantitative psychologist and an Assistant Professor and Statistical Analyst at the Friedman School where he teaches several statistics and methodology courses. Dr. Houser has over 25 years of experience analyzing public health, social welfare, education and nutrition research data. His research interests include: food security and dietary adequacy, health psychology and self-regulation of eating behavior, the impact of nutrition knowledge on health and diet, and the origins and malleability of food preferences. Dr. Curtis Huttenhower is a Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. His research is concerned with the discovery of useful biological knowledge in large collections of genomic data. The goal of Dr. Huttenhower’s research is to allow any new biomedical question to be answered by extracting information from the entire body of existing and novel experimental data, using data integration to allow results to be applied to genomic and personalized medicine (and vice versa).
Panelists Dr. Graham R. Jeffries is an agricultural data scientist and postdoctoral scholar working with Dr. Timothy Griffin. His interdisciplinary research unites remote sensing, agricultural modeling, and social sciences to leverage novel data streams for enhancing our understanding of sustainable and resilient agricultural systems. His postdoctoral work focuses on quantifying the impact of interannual climate variability on crop productivity in central Brazil (with support from the National SocioEnvironmental Synthesis Center). Dr. Eileen Kennedy is a former dean and current professor at the Friedman School. She created the Healthy Eating Index which is used as a single summary measure of diet quality. Dr. Kennedy's research interests include assessing the health, nutrition, diet and food security impacts of policies and programs; nutrient density and diet diversity; and agriculture nutrition linkages. She also founded and was the first Executive Director of the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. Dr. Matthew Lange is a Food and Health Informatician and Research Scientist at University of CaliforniaDavis. Dr. Lange’s research aims to define and shape a new scientific discipline known as Food Informatics, while simultaneously enabling the engineering of a computable infrastructure for the burgeoning Internet of Food (IoF). IoF is the global, evolving knowledge base of food which allows anyone on the Internet to contribute what they know about food and find answers to their questions. Dr. Jef Leroy is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division. He studies the impact of two large-scale integrated food and nutrition programs in Burundi and Guatemala on maternal and child nutrition and health. He is also involved in research on the impact of aflatoxin on child linear growth in Kenya and Mexico and studies the measurement of linear growth retardation.
Panelists Dr. Michael Lustgarten is a research scientist at the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. His research focus involves the role of the gut microbiome and serum metabolome on muscle mass and function in older adults. Dr. Jiantao Ma is an alumnus of the Nutrition Epidemiology Program at the Friedman School. He is currently a Research Fellow in the Framingham Heart Study and the Population Sciences Branch at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. His research interest is integrating complex genetic and genomic measurements with traditional nutritional and epidemiological studies to investigate etiology for cardiometabolic diseases. He also studies biomarkers and metabolic pathways related to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Dr. William Masters is a Professor in the Friedman School and the Department of Economics at Tufts. His research uses economic methods to inform and improve the food system, especially in developing countries. He is currently the primary investigator of the United in Building and Advancing Life Expectations (UBALE) project, a five-year development food assistance program funded by USAID’s Office of Food for Peace and Feed the Future. In partnership with Catholic Relief Services and local partners in Malawi, Dr. Masters’ team conducts research in two domains: delivery of program interventions and control of aflatoxin contamination. Dr. Daniel Maxwell directs the Food Security and Livelihoods in Complex Emergencies Research Program at the Feinstein International Center. He has worked in East and West Africa for over two decades in humanitarian agencies and research institutes, and served as Deputy Director for Eastern and Central Africa for CARE International. His recent research focuses on the re-emergence of famines in the 21st century and the politics of famine, as well as food security, resilience programming and measurement, and livelihoods under stress.
Panelists Dr. Donato Rivas is a Scientist at the Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center for Aging. His research addresses the role of substrates on cellular signaling pathways controlling skeletal muscle metabolism and growth; and how nutrition, aging and exercise contribute to alterations in skeletal muscle energy homoeostasis. Dr. Susan Roberts is a Professor at the Friedman School and the Tufts School of Medicine. Dr. Roberts also serves as the Director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the HNRCA, where her lab studies dietary determinants of body fatness, energy efficiency, expenditure, and intake, and behavioral programs for weight loss. Dr. Roberts developed the Instinct Diet, and is currently testing new food formulations for effective prevention and treatment of malnutrition in Guinea-Bissau. Dr. Gitanjali Singh is an Assistant Professor at the Friedman School. Her research focuses on quantifying the relationships between diet and cardiometabolic disease in the context of the global nutrition transition, and on understanding how this transition contributes to health disparities worldwide. Dr. Singh’s current work aims to understand how metabolic factors mediate the relationship between diet and chronic disease, and how this relationship is affected by upstream socioeconomic factors. She currently leads data collection efforts for the Global Dietary Database Consortium, an initiative funded by the Gates Foundation to characterize diet and disease in 200 countries. Dr. Sumeeta Srinivasan is a Lecturer in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning at Tufts. Her research interests are at the intersection of sustainable development and spatial inequities of access. Since 2006 she has been a Preceptor for Geospatial Methods at Harvard University where she has taught courses on spatial models and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). She is also affiliated with the Center for Geographic Analysis and the China Project at Harvard University.
Panelists Dr. Dennis Steindler is a Senior Scientist at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts. His research group focuses on stem cells, and regenerative and integrated medicine therapies in neurologic disorders. His research focuses on developmental neurobiology, traumatic brain injury and neuro-degenerative diseases. His lab is also interested in brain regeneration, stem cells, persistent neurogenesis in the adult human brain, cell tumorigenesis, and combined therapies for neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Dr. Sarah Stone is an Epidemiologist in maternal and child health at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. She works with the Nutrition Division to support data needs for the Women's, Infants and Children (WIC), Growth and Nutrition Programs, PRAMS (Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System) and TitleV MCH Block Grant programs. Her research includes maternal well-being, infant health outcomes, and effects of stressful events during pregnancy and post-partum. Dr. Italo Faria do Valle is a postdoctoral researcher in the Barabasi Lab at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern university. His research involves working with omics data analysis in different contexts: functional genomics, oncology and systems biology. His research interests rely on the development of methods for studying complex biological systems through the combination of Computational Biology, Network Science and Statistics. Dr. Parke Wilde is a Professor and Director of the Food and Nutrition Policy and Programs division at the Friedman School. His research addresses food security and hunger measurement, the economics of food assistance programs, and US federal dietary guidance policy. His research interests include the geography of local food retail, federal commodity checkoff programs, and food and beverage marketing to children. Parke is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Food Forum and the research committee advising AGree, a national food policy initiative.
Panelists Dr. Norbert Wilson is a Professor of Food Policy at the Friedman School. His research touches on a number of food issues of such as access, choice, and food waste. He continues to work on food safety and quality issues in international trade and domestic food systems. Additionally, his work is moving to explore equity in food access and health, especially in prices and quality of coffee supply chain. He loves good coffee and has published analysis of coffee quality and prices. Dr. Fang Fang Zhang is a cancer epidemiologist and an Associate Professor at the Friedman School. Her research utilizes population-based studies to investigate the role of nutrition in cancer prevention and control. She has worked with on several pioneering studies to investigate geneenvironment interactions associated with cancer risk. energy balance and breast cancer risk in sisters, patterns of weight gain during and after cancer treatment, and associated risk factors such as dietary intake and levels of energy expenditure in pediatric survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Her current research aims to evaluate dietary intake in adult survivors of childhood cancer and its associations with treatment exposure, chronic health conditions, and quality of life.
Workshop Instructors Dr. Tania Alarcon Falconi received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tufts. As part of her dissertation, Tania developed a systematic approach to time series analysis of seasonal infections, using longitudinal data from observational studies, clinical records, and surveillance systems in the US, India, and Ecuador. She has extensive teaching experience in statistics for health applications and in data visualization. In 2018, Tania was awarded the Tufts Presidential Award for Civic Life, which recognizes students for outstanding achievements in service, leadership, and civic engagement during their time at Tufts. Dr. Abigail Horn is a Research Scientist at the German Federal Institute for Risk Protection and a Postdoctoral Scholar at KĂźhne Logistics University. Her current research utilizes network science, applied probability, and operations research to derive innovative solutions to mitigate large-scale outbreaks of disease. She recently led a research project at the German federal food protection agency to develop, implement, and evaluate algorithms and decision support systems for identifying the source of large-scale outbreaks of foodborne disease. Her current work involves extending this approach to the US food supply system and integrating digital trace data to better model the “last mileâ€? of food distribution to the consumer. Kyle Monahan is the Statistics and Research Technology Specialist at Tufts, where he provides statistical consulting, data visualization and highperformance computing (HPC) support. He enjoys using data-intensive tools to analyze complex systems through data analysis and visualization, map design, code scripting, and environmental sampling. His research has taken him from developing contaminant chronologies for the Hudson River, to identifying microfossils in sediment from extreme weather events, to designing low -cost water filters. His most recent work used agent-based models to investigate the role of social and behavioral factors on the feasibility of water filters in South Africa.
Student Moderators Silvia Berciano is a PhD Candidate in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition at Tufts University, and a predoctoral researcher at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. Silvia is a trained geneticist with 7 years of experience in Molecular Biology, Genetics, Nutrition, Systems Biology and Big Data, investigating how the interplay between biology, environment and behavior shapes human health. Her work focuses on the discovery and validation of gene-lifestyle interactions and the development of computational pipelines to interpret omic data. She is the Co-Founder & Director of Ethos Genomics, a company which aims to improve health through science-based and personalized lifestyle advice, promoting longterm health from conception and throughout life. Emery “Hattie” Brown is an MS candidate at the Friedman School. Her studies focus on trade and agricultural policy in the interest of international food security. Hattie has worked as a Tisch Fellow at the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service Food Assistance Division, where her work focused on the impact of development programs on agricultural markets and trade facilitation. Hattie was also on a team at that assessed the capacity of technology platforms to manage in-kind donations in the disaster context. Anastasia Marshak is a Researcher at the Feinstein International Center, as well as a doctoral student in the Food & Nutrition Policy & Programs division at Friedman. Her research at Feinstein focuses on programmatic impact and the causes of malnutrition in eastern Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan. She also supports research in northern Uganda, where she is analyzing the long-term impact of conflict on livelihoods and access to services. Her previous experience at Feinstein includes evaluations of youth violence in Karamoja and the role of microfinance in supporting the livelihoods of internally displaced persons in Uganda. Anastasia brings expertise in quantitative analysis, research design, and nutrition to Feinstein. Jeeyon Janet Kim is a PhD Candidate at the Friedman School in Food & Nutrition Policy & Programs. Since joining the program in 2013, she has worked with Daniel Maxwell on various projects relating to resilience, social capital, and politics of humanitarian data and response. For her dissertation, Janet is conducting a mixed methods study to examine the effects of migration on household food security status, women’s workload and decisionmaking roles in Nepal. As part of her dissertation, Janet is working with Feinstein Center on the Promoting Agriculture, Health, and Alternative Livelihoods (PAHAL) project in Nepal.
Institutional Sponsors We would like to thank all our institutional sponsors for their generous support of this summit. These contributions have enabled us to provide honoraria for guest speakers, audio/visual recording of Summit sessions, catered meals, and conference logistical support.
FRIEDMAN STUDENT COUNCIL
Institutional Partners
Sponsors We would like to thank all our sponsors for their generous donations, cash and in kind, towards this conference. Sponsor contributions towards the 2018 Nutrition Data Summit total over $1000, enabling us to provide breakfast, healthy snacks, fruits, and coffee throughout the event. We are very grateful for your support!
Local Sponsors We would like to thank all our local sponsors for offering discounts to NDS 2018 attendees! We encourage attendees to visit these establishments and explore Boston’s Chinatown through this conference! To avail this discount, please present your NDS 2018 conference badge at these establishments, and request the appropriate discount for your purchase.