Research Professor, Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University

Dr. Nicola McKeown is a research professor in nutrition epidemiology at the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Boston University. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in human nutrition from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and a Ph.D. in nutritional epidemiology from the University of Cambridge in England.

Her research primarily focuses on the impact of the association between diet quality and genetics/other “omics” on disease risk and healthy aging. Nicola has significantly contributed to improving our understanding of the impact of different carbohydrate sources, including grains and sugar-sweetened beverages, on cardiometabolic and diabetes risk factors.

Nicola is a scientific advisor for the Whole Grains Council and a member of the International Whole Grain Initiative, where she serves on the whole grain intake recommendations working group. She is also the PI of a publicly available dietary fiber database linking research on dietary fibers to human health outcomes and the former PI of the Adhering to Dietary Approaches for Personal Taste (ADAPT) study.

Nicola currently holds a position on the editorial board for Nutrition Today and is a peer reviewer for prominent health and nutrition journals such as AJCN, J Nutrition, and Diabetes Care. She has over 100 peer-reviewed papers with an H-index of 54, has successfully mentored many PhD and MS students, and is currently teaching a course on nutritional epidemiology to graduate students at Boston University.