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Cancer Research Training Award Fellow
Risk Factor Assessment Branch, Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program
Email: amelia.willits-smith@nih.gov
- PhD - Public Health (Nutrition focus),
Certificate in Global Health, Tulane University - MS – Community Nutrition, Cornell University
- BA – Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology, University of Colorado at Boulder
Biography
Amelia Willits-Smith, PhD, is a Cancer Research Training Award fellow (CRTA) in the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program’s (EGRP) Risk Factor Assessment Branch (RFAB). In this role, she works with Dr. Kirsten Herrick and others in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) on projects related to methods used to measure and model how lifestyle factors such as nutrition, obesity, physical activity, and sleep influence or predict cancer development and how these methods can be applied in research to help address health disparities and impact public policy.
Prior to joining NCI, Dr. Willits-Smith earned her PhD in public health (with a nutrition focus) from Tulane University; her MS in community nutrition from Cornell University; and her BS in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Dr. Willit-Smith’s dissertation and postdoc work have been on a project summarizing and linking food-related life cycle assessment studies to U.S. dietary data. The resulting database of Food Impacts on the Environment for Linking to Diet (dataFIELD) has been used to examine the distributions and correlates of food-related greenhouse gas emissions, cumulative energy demand, and water use from self-selected U.S. diets.
Select Publications
See listing of publications authored by Dr. Willits-Smith in PubMed.