National Program Leader, Human Nutrition
ARS, USDA
Cindy Davis serves as National Program Leader for the program in Human Nutrition conducted by the USDA-Agricultural Research Service. In this role, she helps direct the scientific program for six Human Nutrition Research Centers. Prior to joining USDA, she was the Director of Grants and Extramural Activities in the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) where she actively engaged and encouraged partnerships with other NIH Institutes and Centers to develop a portfolio that advances both nutritional and botanical dietary supplement research for optimizing public health. She is also actively involved in a number of government working groups focused on the microbiome including being a co-founder and co-chair of the Joint Agency Microbiome (NIH, FDA, NIST and USDA) working group. Before coming to ODS, she was a Program Director in the Nutritional Sciences Research Group at the National Cancer Institute. Cindy received her bachelor’s degree with honors in nutritional sciences from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and her doctorate degree in nutrition with a minor in human cancer biology from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Laboratory of Experimental Carcinogenesis at the National Cancer Institute. She then joined the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center, USDA, as a research nutritionist. In 2000, she received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and was named the USDA Early Career Scientist. She is a supplement editor for the Journal of Nutrition, assistant editor for Nutrition Reviews and a member of the editorial board for Advances in Nutrition.