Precision Nutrition in Research, Policy, and PracticeCornell Course

Martin T. Wells, Ph.D., joined the Cornell faculty in 1987 and is the Charles A. Alexander Professor of Statistical Sciences. He is also a Professor of Social Statistics, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research at Weill Medical School, an Elected Member of the Cornell Law School Faculty, as well as the Director of Research in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He teaches statistical methodology to undergraduate and graduate students in fields such as agriculture, biology, epidemiology, finance, law, medicine, nutrition, social science, and veterinary medicine as well as graduate courses in statistics. 

Saurabh Mehta is a physician with training and expertise in nutrition, epidemiology, infectious disease, and diagnostics. Dr. Mehta is currently the Janet and Gordon Lankton Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University and serves on its executive leadership team. He is also the founding director of the Cornell Center for Precision Nutrition and Health and co-director of the NIH-funded Center for Point of Care Diagnostics for Nutrition, Infection, and Cancer as part of the POCTRN network. Dr. Mehta is the program director of the NIH-supported training program on artificial intelligence and precision nutrition. He also co-leads the Research Coordinating Center for the NIH’s Nutrition for Precision Health Initiative and directs the Program in International Nutrition at Cornell.

The central theme of Dr. Mehta’s research is the interplay between nutrition and disease, including facilitating field-friendly assessment for both and elucidating how nutrition can be used as a modifiable risk factor to improve health and associated outcomes, often in the context of pregnancy and early childhood. This is achieved through a combination of active surveillance programs, the invention of point-of-care diagnostics, and randomized controlled trials primarily in India, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. 

Dr. Mehta received his medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India, and followed it up with a doctoral degree in Epidemiology and Nutrition from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. His work has been recognized with multiple awards, including a NIH Technology Accelerator Challenge Prize for Innovative Global Health Diagnostics, the Norman Kretchmer Memorial Award for Nutrition and Development, the Rainer Gross Prize for Innovations in Nutrition and Health, and the SUNY Chancellor Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities.