Kathleen Keller says building healthy eating patterns for children can prevent obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. Her work on discovering how eating patterns develop in children earned her a national award in nutrition and development.
Dr. Keller is the Mark T. Greenberg Early Career Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and on April 27 in San Diego, she received the 2014 Norman Kretchmer Memorial Award in Nutrition and Development. The American Society of Nutrition award is given to a young investigator for a substantial body of independent research in the field of nutrition and development.
Dr. Keller was nominated by members of the Department of Nutritional Sciences. The nomination letters commented on her innovation and leadership in the field. She said the Social Science Research Institute was instrumental in building the type of collaborations and research that win national awards like this one.
“It was the infrastructure that SSRI put in place and its support of pilot research studies that made this happen,” she said. “It’s especially helpful for young scientists in these times of scarce funding, and it can be very uplifting for the type of work we are doing.”
Keller serves on the editorial board for the International Journal of Obesity and on the program committee for the Society of the Study of Ingestive Behavior. She has served on the membership committee for The Obesity Society and recently became the ASN’s representative on the Advisory Committee Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.