Jennifer T. Smilowitz Ph. D.

Dr. Smilowitz is the Associate Director of Human Health Assessment Research for the Foods for Health Institute. She holds a doctoral degree in Nutritional Biology with an emphasis in Endocrinology from the University of California Davis. Dr. Smilowitz is a Fellow of the Business Development Program at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and Center for Entrepreneurship. During her Ph.D. program, Dr. Smilowitz discovered metabolic phenotypes associated with changes in body composition in a large-multi-center and designed and executed several human studies probing specific lipid metabolic pathways in the inflammation cascade. Dr. Smilowitz's current research focuses on the development of assessment technologies for the identification of metabolic phenotypes in response to food-based solutions for ameliorating metabolic diseases and optimizing health and performance. Other research interests include elucidating structure-function relationships of lipoproteins and protective functions of skin and human milk. She is the Project Coordinator for the UC Davis Lactation Study, a large multi-disciplinary and multi-collaborative prospective human study collecting well-annotated human milk samples from lactating moms. Dr. Smilowitz is the contact person at FFHI for investigators interested in obtaining structural support and guidance for initiating human studies designed to assess metabolic, performance and health responses to food.

Dr. Smilowitz consults for food companies in the formulation of food products with health properties.