Postdoctoral Research Associate
University of Connecticut Rudd Center for food Policy and Health
Maria Gombi-Vaca is a Postdoctoral Research at the University of Connecticut Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health, where she focuses her research on food insecurity and evaluating nutrition assistance initiatives. Dr. Gombi-Vaca aspires to improve access to healthy food through implementing community-based solutions. Her most recent studies centered on developing and validating tools to track nutrition quality of foods in the charitable food system. She earned her PhD in Public Health from the University of São Paulo School of Medicine where she studied the effects of ultra-processed food on diet-related outcomes and investigated environmental and behavioral factors that influence food choices.