Elizabeth Widen

Elizabeth Widen, Ph.D., RD, serves as a Courtesy Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Department of Women's Health at Dell Medical School, and as an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences within the School of Human Ecology at the College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin. She maintains dual institutional affiliations as a faculty member at the Dell Pediatric Research Institute and faculty research associate at the Population Research Center.

Her educational background includes:

• Ph.D. in Nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

As a nutritional and perinatal epidemiologist, Dr. Widen employs a life course approach intersecting nutrition, perinatal/pediatric epidemiology, behavioral nutrition, and human biology. Her methodology combines advanced analytics to elucidate early-life nutrition's impact on lifelong health outcomes with interdisciplinary intervention programs targeting pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood nutrition improvement.

Her scientific recognition includes:

• Norman Kretchmer Award in Nutrition & Development
• American Society for Nutrition 2025 Mid-Career Award (Community & Public Health Nutrition Research Section)
• American Society for Nutrition 2023 Honors

Professional society memberships reflect her research focus:

• American Society for Nutrition
• Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research
• The Obesity Society

Through her Dell Pediatric Research Institute and Population Research Center affiliations, she contributes to integrated research frameworks addressing systemic health challenges in Central Texas with national implications for maternal-child health interventions.