Abigail Johnson

Abigail Johnson, PhD, RD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology & Community Health at the University of Minnesota. She also serves as the Associate Director of the Nutrition Coordinating Center (NCC) and is a Member of the Masonic Cancer Center (MCC).

Dr. Johnson earned her PhD in Nutrition and completed her Registered Dietitian (RD) training at the University of Minnesota, where she also obtained her BS in Nutrition Science and Biology.

Her research explores the relationships between diet and the human gut microbiome in health and disease using novel computational methods for dietary data. Her current focus areas include: analysis of diet and microbiome after dietary interventions, methods development for dietary data analysis and visualization, and understanding the interactions between foods, microbes, and fungi during different stages of development. She is particularly interested in how diet and the microbiome interact to influence chronic diseases including prediabetes, diabetes, and cancer.

Dr. Johnson's research demonstrates significant trends in microbiome analysis, dietary assessment, and computational methods. Her work increasingly focuses on personalized nutrition approaches, longitudinal microbiome dynamics, and the integration of multi-omics data to understand diet-microbe-host interactions in disease contexts.

Her scientific contributions include:

• Development of methods for dietary data analysis and visualization
• Research on diet-microbiome interactions in chronic diseases
• Studies on how immigration and dietary changes affect the gut microbiome
• Investigations into personalized diet-microbiome associations

Dr. Johnson actively mentors students and researchers in the fields of nutritional science, microbiome research, and computational biology. Her work has been supported by various research grants focused on understanding the complex relationships between diet, the microbiome, and human health.