Mahsa Jessri

Mahsa Jessri is an Associate Professor in the Food, Nutrition and Health Program at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Land and Food Systems. She holds the prestigious Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Nutritional Epidemiology for Population Health and is affiliated with the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research (CHSPR) and the Department of Health Services and Policy at the UBC School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Jessri also serves as an Affiliate Investigator of Evidence to Innovation (E2i) Theme at the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute.

Her educational background includes a PhD (Vanier Scholar) in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Toronto, an M.Sc. in Nutrition and Metabolism from the University of Alberta, and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship from Statistics Canada. Dr. Jessri's research is uniquely positioned at the intersection of nutritional sciences, big data analytics, AI, and population and public health, with the overarching goal of providing evidence-based decision tools to inform guidelines and policies for reducing the burden of chronic diseases.

Dr. Jessri's research program focuses on using big data and methodological advancements (including AI and machine learning) to identify dietary patterns and their interactions with health outcomes, population health impact assessment of food and nutrition policies, nutritional monitoring and population surveillance, development of robust methods for complex data analysis, and design of personalized nutrition risk assessment tools. Her Nutritional Epidemiology and Big Data Analytics Laboratory provides a stimulating environment for research in these areas.

Her publication portfolio demonstrates a strong focus on dietary patterns, chronic disease prevention, and the application of advanced statistical methods to nutritional epidemiology. Her recent work has examined nutrient profiling models, cardiovascular disease risk, dietary pattern assessment tools, and the impact of dietary factors on health outcomes across diverse populations including Canadian adults, Inuit communities, and international cohorts.

Among her notable honors are the Royal Society of Canada (RCS) Alice Wilson Award (2018), Emerging Leader in Nutrition Science from the American Society for Nutrition, and the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has also received the INMD/CNS Early Career Researcher Partnership Prize and the Discovery Award from the Banting Research Foundation.

Dr. Jessri teaches FNH 398: Research Methods in Human Nutrition and has previously taught graduate-level courses at the University of Ottawa. Her academic career builds on decades of clinical and public health dietetics and nutrition policy experience working at academic and regulatory institutions. She has served as a past Core member of Health Canada's Nutrition Science Advisory Committee (NSAC) and is active in the American Society for Nutrition and American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Nutrition Research Taskforce.