Faculty Affiliate
University of California, Davis
Dr. Smilowitz is a faculty affiliate in the Department of Food Science and Technology and Associate Director of the Human Studies Research Program for the Foods for Health Institute at University of California Davis. She holds a doctoral degree in Nutritional Biology with an emphasis in Endocrinology and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Food Science from the University of California Davis. She has a well-established career in lactation and milk science, particularly human milk and clinical nutrition. Her approach to solving complex problems relies on implementing cross-disciplinary and multi-collaborative methods. She has published more than 70 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals on lactation, milk science, and the intestinal microbiome across all life stages.
She is a fellow of the University of California Davis School of Management which was instrumental in shifting her research toward translation to make a greater impact on human health. In 2009, Dr. Smilowitz developed the Foods for Health Mentorship Program at University of California Davis. and has mentored over 100 undergraduate and graduate students majoring in Nutrition and Food Science. Dr. Smilowitz is an invited guest lecturer for various undergraduate and graduate-level courses in lactation, microbiology, nutrition and food science at the University of California Davis. Dr. Smilowitz is also the Director of Scientific and Strategic Development for the International Milk Genomics Consortium, a non-profit, international scientific society made up of scientists and innovators all of whom share the aim to discover the functions and impact of lactation and milk.
As a Lactation Education Counselor, she conducts lactation education to women during pregnancy and in the postpartum period and conducts outreach on the benefits of breastfeeding through lectures and webinars to health-care practitioners across northern Californian hospitals, clinics and Women Infants and Children (WIC) staff. Her education, training and the research program that she has built over the past fifteen years has led her to the conclusion that the continuum from pre-pregnancy through a child’s 2nd birthday--is a critical period in life when diet largely influences long-lasting health in both mother and child.
Her current research program is widely translational and she is currently conducting projects designed to implement and evaluate telehealth solutions that support evidence-based nutrition for the mother-child dyad and beyond.