Anna Maria Siega-Riz, dean of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and professor in both nutrition and epidemiology, recently appeared as an invited speaker at the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Agricultural Technology and Food Salon held Oct. 6-7 to celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child. The IFIC is a nonprofit educational organization with a mission to effectively communicate science-based information about health, nutrition, food safety and agriculture.

Image

The two-day Agricultural Technology and Food Salon convened women who are impacting science, food systems and the public in order to highlight the importance of seeing women in the science and engineering workforce. According to recent data from the National Science Foundation, women comprise 43% of the workforce as scientists and engineers.

Siega-Riz provided the second day’s opening remarks which highlighted her own career path as well as women leaders in food technology, public health and agriculture. Watch the session here.

Siega-Riz is an internationally recognized expert on maternal and child nutrition. Her research focuses on the first 1,000 days of life by understanding the influence of maternal weight status and dietary patterns/behaviors in the etiology of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including but not limited to gestational diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, pre-eclampsia, preterm birth, and inadequate or excessive gestational weight gain.

A member of the IFIC’s Board of Trustees, Siega-Riz also serves on the National Institutes of Health’s Council of Councils, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Health and Medicine Division Advisory Committee, and the Food and Nutrition Board. She previously served on the 2015 Federal Advisory Committee for the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans.