Postdoctoral Fellow
Harvard Medical School & Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
Amy R. Nichols, PhD, MS, RD is a Registered Dietitian and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Division of Chronic Disease Research Across the Lifecourse in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Science in Nutrition and Food Science from Colorado State University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Nutritional Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin. Building on her extensive experience in maternal and child nutrition and dietetics, her interdisciplinary research focuses on the nutritional, biological, and social aspects of the preconception period through the first 1000 days with a translational emphasis on modifiable determinants that affect the lifecourse. Leveraging data from Project Viva, the focus of her fellowship is to examine the extent to which evidence of impaired fertility and reproductive risk factors will be associated with body composition, bone health, and cardiometabolic outcomes among females in midlife. Previously, her doctoral work utilized advanced trajectory modeling to investigate effects of prenatal nutrition exposures on short-term maternal and neonatal outcomes in high-risk pregnancies affected by obesity or multiple gestations. This work was partially funded by the American Society for Nutrition and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.