Christopher Gardner, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Director of Nutrition Studies Research Group, Stanford University

For more than 30 years Christopher Gardner, PhD, Rehnborg Farquhar professor of medicine at Stanford, and nutrition scientist, has studied what to consume and to avoid for optimal health, and how best to motivate individuals to achieve healthy dietary behaviors. He is currently serving on the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and is the past chair of the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee. He has conducted and published dozens of human nutrition intervention trials, including trials of Mediterranean, Vegan, Ketogenic, Low-Fat and Low-Carb diets and their effects on cardiometabolic health. Some of his current interests include Stealth Nutrition, Unapologetic Deliciousness and Institutional Food Settings. He is currently working on personalized nutrition explorations with several colleagues, with particular focus on the gut microbiome. Professor Gardner’s work was recently featured in a Netflix docuseries (Jan 2024) – “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment.”

Arun Majumdar, PhD, Chester Naramore Dean, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University

Dr. Arun Majumdar is the Inaugural Dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Jay Precourt Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Energy Science and Engineering, and Senior Fellow and former Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution and the Woods Institute for the Environment. He is also a faculty member in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (by courtesy) and Photon Science at SLAC. He served in the Obama administration as the Founding Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) and as the Acting Under Secretary of Energy. He served as a Science Envoy for the US Department of State and currently serves as the Chair of the US Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.  Dr. Majumdar was also the Vice President for Energy at Google and advises numerous businesses in the energy innovation ecosystem. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.

Christopher Gardner, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Director of Nutrition Studies Research Group, Stanford University

For more than 30 years Christopher Gardner, PhD, Rehnborg Farquhar professor of medicine at Stanford, and nutrition scientist, has studied what to consume and to avoid for optimal health, and how best to motivate individuals to achieve healthy dietary behaviors. He is currently serving on the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and is the past chair of the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee. He has conducted and published dozens of human nutrition intervention trials, including trials of Mediterranean, Vegan, Ketogenic, Low-Fat and Low-Carb diets and their effects on cardiometabolic health. Some of his current interests include Stealth Nutrition, Unapologetic Deliciousness and Institutional Food Settings. He is currently working on personalized nutrition explorations with several colleagues, with particular focus on the gut microbiome. Professor Gardner’s work was recently featured in a Netflix docuseries (Jan 2024) – “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment.”

Rachel Herdes, DO, Clinical Assistant Professor, Pediatrics-Gastroenterology, Stanford Department of Pediatrics

Evaluation of a High Fiber, Non-Restrictive Diet on Pediatric Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease-A Pilot Study

Rachel Herdes DO is a Clinical Educator and Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition. She completed her GI fellowship at Stanford, an Advanced Nutrition fellowship at CHOP, and then started as faculty in December 2023. She is board certified in Pediatric Gastroenterology, Obesity Medicine, and Nutrition Support.  Dr. Herdes is Director of Pediatric Gastroenterology Advocacy and Community Engagement and the Founder of GUTS (Gastroenterologists United to Serve). Her clinical interests related to pediatric severe obesity, fatty liver disease, adolescent bariatric surgery, and intestinal failure. Her current research focuses on dietary therapies for GI pathologies, as well as identifying and reducing barriers to the implementation of lifestyle modification.  She is motivated to provide innovative and equitable health care to children throughout California and beyond.  

Jayakumar Rajadas, PhD,  Director of ADDReB and Assistant Director of Cardiovascular Pharmacology, Stanford Medicine

Development of health promoting plant-based meat burger and Gelly smoothy

Dr. Rajadas is a trained bioengineer with 34 years of experience designing and developing regenerative biomaterials. He is the founding faculty director of the ADDReB lab of Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. For the past four years, he has focused on developing therapeutic vegan food, particularly nutraceuticals that promote anti-aging and neuro-regenerative properties. He and his colleagues recently discovered that plant-derived 7,8-dihydroxy flavanone has an anti-dyskinetic effect in a Parkinson’s disease model. Dr. Rajadas has also developed isothiocyanate-based food materials with potential Cancer Chemo-Preventive properties. Additionally, he has extensively researched the wound-healing effects of curcumin, a nutraceutical derived from Indian curry powder.  

Mathangi Janakiraman, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, Gastroenterology, Stanford Medicine

Dietary supplementation with fermented food reverses age-dependent gut dysbiosis and maintains gut health

Mathangi Janakiraman is a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Laren Becker's lab. Her research focus in graduated with a Masters in Biotechnology from SASTRA University, India in 2017. Through the MITACS Globalink internship program, she interned with Dr. Julia Baum at the University of Victoria, Canada. She was part of a study on the biodiversity of, and human impacts on, the coral reef microbiome. She worked on her Masters thesis - “Characterization of the role of key players in the immune system in post cerebral ischemic injury and repair” - in the lab of Dr. Josef Anrather at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, USA. She completed her PhD in Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Germany, under Dr. Gurumoorthy Krishnamoorthy. Her PhD dissertation was on the Regulation of spontaneous CNS autoimmunity by dietary salt.

Tamiko Katsumoto, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Medicine-Immunology & Rheumatology, Stanford Medicine

“PLANT” – Providers Learning About Nutrition Together

Tamiko Katsumoto, MD, is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University. She earned her MD from the UC San Francisco, where she also completed her internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship. Deeply committed to human and planetary health, she is passionate about educating her patients and colleagues on the merits of sustainable plant-rich diets as a strategy to both improve individual health and mitigate climate change and environmental degradation. She is working closely with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the Human and Planetary Health initiative to help shape the strategy on Food Systems, Health and the Environment.  She currently serves as the co-chair of the American College of Rheumatology Task Force on Climate Change and co-directs the Stanford Immune Related Toxicity Working Group, where she is interested in the impact of diet on cancer outcomes.

Wei-ting Chen, PhD, Executive Director, Food For Health Equity Lab, Stanford Medicine

Exploring the Experiences of Latinx Farmers and Patients in Food As Medicine

Wei-ting Chen, PhD is the Executive Director of the Food for Health Equity Lab at Stanford Medicine. Dr. Chen has a doctorate in sociology from the Johns Hopkins University where she was also a Center for a Livable Future-Lerner Fellow. Before joining Stanford Medicine in 2019, she worked as the Nutrition, Family & Consumer Sciences Advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system in the Bay Area. While at UCCE, she oversaw the successful implementation of federal nutrition education programs reaching thousands of low-income residents and students in public schools. She has also lent her expertise to the creation of health communication products and capacity-building programs for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is forever fascinated by how social contexts shape people’s relationship to food and the food system.

Anna Thomas, PhD Student, Computer Science

What can large language models do for sustainable food?

Anna Thomas is a computer science PhD student at Stanford, advised by Maya Mathur and Moses Charikar. Her research interests are at the intersection of causal inference, machine learning, and food. She is a member of the Stanford Humane and Sustainable Food Lab. Previously, she completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Stanford and a master's degree in statistics from Cambridge.

Jessica Hope RN, MSN, NP, Research Scientist, Humane & Sustainable Food Lab, Stanford University

Traditional And Contemporary Meat Options Study (TACOS): a Hypothetical Discrete Choice Pilot Study of the Effect of the Presence of Plant-Based Meats on Online Menu Selections

Jessica Hope, RN, MSN, NP, is a research scientist for the Humane & Sustainable Food Lab at Stanford. Under the direction of an award-winning epidemiologist in the Quantitative Sciences Unit, the lab applies rigorous statistical analysis to interventions intended to increase the adoption of, or movement toward, plant-based diets. Her current research examines consumer behavior in response to the addition of new plant-based entrées on menus and in cafeterias. Her favorite project last year was helping a colleague analyze the impact of popular documentary films on nationwide interest in plant-based eating. In the past, she conducted research in the areas of emergency contraception, kidney donation, raw milk digestion, and the microbiome. A graduate of Princeton and Vanderbilt, Jessica is also a member of Stanford Lifestyle Medicine.

Ethan Brown, Founder and CEO, Beyond Meat

Ethan Brown is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, a company dedicated to building meat from plants to simultaneously and powerfully address human health, climate, natural resource, and animal welfare challenges. The Company’s flagship product, the Beyond Burger, revolutionized the meat aisle by being the first plant-based burger to be sold in the meat case alongside beef at major grocery chains. As part of the company’s efforts to advance human health, Beyond Meat has partnered with the Stanford University School of Medicine and the American Cancer Society to support research on plant-based meat, and several of the company’s products have been certified by the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association. Ethan holds an MBA from Columbia University and an MPP from the University of Maryland. He is on the board of the American Cancer Society’s CEO’s Against Cancer (LA Chapter) as well as a member of the Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute. 

Christopher Gardner, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Director of Nutrition Studies Research Group, Stanford University

For more than 30 years Christopher Gardner, PhD, Rehnborg Farquhar professor of medicine at Stanford, and nutrition scientist, has studied what to consume and to avoid for optimal health, and how best to motivate individuals to achieve healthy dietary behaviors. He is currently serving on the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and is the past chair of the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee. He has conducted and published dozens of human nutrition intervention trials, including trials of Mediterranean, Vegan, Ketogenic, Low-Fat and Low-Carb diets and their effects on cardiometabolic health. Some of his current interests include Stealth Nutrition, Unapologetic Deliciousness and Institutional Food Settings. He is currently working on personalized nutrition explorations with several colleagues, with particular focus on the gut microbiome. Professor Gardner’s work was recently featured in a Netflix docuseries (Jan 2024) – “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment.”

Tamiko Katsumoto, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Medicine-Immunology & Rheumatology, Stanford Medicine

Tamiko Katsumoto, MD, is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University. She earned her MD from the UC San Francisco, where she also completed her internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship. Deeply committed to human and planetary health, she is passionate about educating her patients and colleagues on the merits of sustainable plant-rich diets as a strategy to both improve individual health and mitigate climate change and environmental degradation. She is working closely with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the Human and Planetary Health initiative to help shape the strategy on Food Systems, Health and the Environment.  She currently serves as the co-chair of the American College of Rheumatology Task Force on Climate Change and co-directs the Stanford Immune Related Toxicity Working Group, where she is interested in the impact of diet on cancer outcomes.

Jim Leape, JD, Co-Director of Center for Ocean Solutions and William and Eva Price Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Jim Leape is the William and Eva Price Senior Fellow and co-director of the Center for Ocean Solutions in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, part of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. At Stanford, Jim has led Before coming to Stanford in 2014, Jim was Director General of WWF International and leader of the global WWF Network, one of the world’s largest conservation organizations. Previously, he directed the conservation and science programs of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; served as executive vice president of WWF-US; and was a legal advisor to the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya. Jim is a Fellow with the Bezos Earth Fund and has served on several boards; from 2007 to 2017, he was a member of the China Council for International Cooperation in Environment and Development, which advises the Premier of China. He has an A.B. from Harvard College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Stephen Luby, MD, Lucy Becker Professor of Medicine, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Dr. Luby has conducted research at the interface between the environment and health in low income countries for the last 30 years. He lived in Pakistan for 5 years and Bangladesh for 8 years. Dr. Luby is currently appointed as the Lucy Becker Professor of Medicine in the Infectious Diseases Division and a Senior Fellow to Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He also serves as the faculty director of Stanford’s Human and Planetary Health Initiative. Since joining Stanford 12 years ago Dr. Luby’s research is increasingly focused on developing and evaluating approaches to counter the perverse incentives where people earn money by destroying the environment and health.

Vayu Hill-Maini, PhD, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, Stanford School of Engineering

Vayu fell in love with cooking at a young age in his multicultural home in Stockholm, Sweden. He first moved to the U.S to work in restaurants, but the flavors, textures, and sensations of the kitchen eventually led him to scientific research. He received his B.A in Chemistry and Biology at Carleton College in 2015. He completed his PhD in Biochemistry from Harvard University in 2020, where he worked in the lab of Emily Balskus to characterize strains and enzymes from human gut microbiota responsible for the metabolism of drugs and dietary compounds. As a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, Vayu discovered and engineered filamentous fungi for sustainable foods in the lab of Jay Keasling. In addition, Vayu has trained at diverse gastronomic institutions, including Basque Culinary Center, Fundación Alicia, The Cultured Pickled Shop, and Michelin-star restaurants Alchemist, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. As a new faculty at Stanford, Vayu is excited about building synthetic biology tools for fungi to unlock new discoveries within mycology, address sustainability challenges, and enable gastronomic creativity.

Michael Wara, PhD, JD, Senior Research Scholar, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Michael Wara is a lawyer and scholar focused on climate and energy policy. Wara is a Senior Research Scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program. The Program provides fact based, bipartisan, technical and legal assistance to policy makers engaged in the development of novel climate and energy law and regulation. Wara also facilitates the connection of Stanford faculty with cutting edge policy debates on climate and energy, leveraging Stanford’s energy and climate expertise to craft real world solutions to meet these challenges. Wara’s legal and policy scholarship focuses on carbon pricing, energy innovation, and regulated industries. He collaborates with economists, engineers, and scientists in research on the design and evaluation of technical and regulatory solutions to climate and energy challenges. He is also an expert on international environmental law with a particular focus on the ozone and climate treaty regimes.

David Hott, MBA, CEO, Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen

David has an educational background in Collaborative Health and Human Services from the University of California, Monterey Bay. He has extensive work experience in food recovery and corporate leadership. David is the CEO of Loaves & Fishes in Silicon Valley, home to the A La Carte Program. He holds a board position with the Northern California Recycling Association (NCRA) and is certified in zero-waste principles and practices by SWANA. Additionally, David is a member of the Edible Food Recovery Technical Council Executive Committee of the California Resource Recovery Association (CRRA). Recently, he completed an MBA in Responsible Business from the University of California, Monterey Bay. As a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, David enjoys spending his free time as a wilderness guide in the backcountry of Yosemite.

Michelle Kuppich, Executive Director, California Food Is Medicine Coalition

Michelle Kuppich is the Executive Director of the California Food is Medicine Coalition (CalFIMC) consisting of several community-based organizations that provide medically tailored meals and other food as medicine interventions to low-income populations with chronic and other serious health conditions. In this role, she advances the Coalition members’ capabilities to sustainably provide impactful nutrition services in partnership with the health care system, oversees efforts to achieve coalition level analytics capabilities for multiple aims, and seeks      partners and funders to help the coalition innovate and adopt technology while elevating and preserving the value of local community-based services. Michelle is also a registered dietitian (RD) with 30 years of diverse professional experiences. Prior to her role at CalFIMC, she advanced the case for nutrition in value-based care at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, implemented clinical quality improvement initiatives at Brown & Toland Physicians in San Francisco, and provided patient care in numerous outpatient settings.

Maya Rams Murthy, MPH, RD, Co-Founder and CEO, Ahara

Maya Rams Murthy, MPH, RD, is a Registered Dietitian with over 15 years of experience in clinical nutrition, public health, and community food program development. Her career has spanned prestigious institutions like Johns Hopkins Medicine and has hinged on creating impactful public health initiatives focused on health equity and nutrition security. Before co-founding Ahara, Maya served as Director of Nutrition and Vice President of Programs at Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, one of the nation’s largest charitable food organizations. She is passionate about ensuring equitable access to nutritious food by leveraging the expertise of diverse Registered Dietitians and collaborating with underserved populations, local organizations, and policymakers to develop solutions that enhance eating habits and promote community well-being. Her work reflects a deep commitment to empowering individuals through nutrition, ensuring everyone has access to the food that helps them thrive.

Lisa Goldman Rosas, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Stanford Medicine

Dr. Lisa Goldman Rosas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health and the Department of Medicine, Division of Primary Care and Population Health at Stanford School of Medicine. An epidemiologist by training, Dr. Goldman Rosas’ research focuses on addressing disparities in chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, depression, and cancer among under resourced groups and communities of color. Critical to this work is addressing important social determinants of health, such as food insecurity. She leads the Food For Health Equity Lab that works collaboratively with healthcare and community partners to develop, implement, and evaluate nutrition programs that significantly contribute to advancing health equity. This research features rigorous quantitative methodologies, participatory qualitative approaches, and shared leadership with patient and community partners. She is passionate about integrating patients, caregivers, community organizations, and other key stakeholders in the research process in order to affect the greatest improvements in health and well-being. In addition to research, she teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels and has a special focus on increasing diversity in biomedical research.

Erika Tribett, MPH, Director, Program Strategy & Design, Project Open Hand

Erika Tribett, MPH is the Director of Program Strategy and Design at Project Open Hand (POH), a community-based organization specializing in medically tailored nutrition interventions and member of the California Food is Medicine Coalition. In her role, she works with teams across the organization to implement strategies that promote person-centered nutrition care for diverse Bay Area populations. She has been key in designing and piloting initiatives to improve engagement with FIM programming – through telehealth, lay navigation, layering of nutrition incentives, and more. She leads efforts to strengthen connections with local agriculture and realize healthcare as critical partners in thriving regional food systems. She works to optimize how POH collects and responds to data, facilitates strategic planning at all levels, and coordinates partnerships with community resources that complement POH services. Previously, Erika worked extensively in multi-institution population health research, patient engagement, and designing learning experiences with Stanford University School of Medicine.

Elisa Caffrey, PhD Candidate, Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University

Elisa Caffrey is a 5th-year graduate student in Justin Sonnenburg's lab within the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on characterizing the microbes present in fermented foods and identifying the metabolites they produce during fermentation that influence both host health and the gut microbiome. Elisa serves as a Metabolomics Research Associate at the Stanford University Mass Spectrometry (SUMS) core facility, where she contributes to the development of metabolomics workflows to better understand microbial chemical production. In addition, together with Justin Sonnenburg and David Zilber, the former Head of Fermentation at NOMA, Elisa has co-hosted the Fermentation Speaker Series, a podcast and speaker series that highlights cutting-edge research on fermented foods with leading experts in the field. She is also the author of the zine Exploring Fermentation and the founder of Rotten Menu, a blog dedicated to exploring the microbiology of fermentation.

Dalia Perelman, MS, RD, Health Educator and Dietitian, Stanford School of Medicine

Dalia is a Registered Dietitian and a Certified Diabetes Educator. She has always been interested in both Nutrition research and its application in clinical practice and has worked in both environments. For 14 years she was a clinical dietitian at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation counseling people with diabetes, heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders and other conditions. She understands the power of diet in disease prevention and treatment and is currently working as a research dietitian at Stanford University with different groups, including Dr. Gardner’s team, to continue to elucidate the use of dietary measures to effectively promote optimal health. Some of the studies Dalia has worked on include the relationship between dietary intake and adipocyte function, the effect of dietary fibers on the microbiome, and personalizing dietary recommendations for optimal blood sugar control.

Justin Sonnenburg, PhD, Alex and Susie Algard Endowed Professor, Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford School of Medicine

Justin Sonnenburg, PhD, is the Alex and Susie Algard Endowed Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he studies the gut microbiota in health and disease and co-directs the Center for Human Microbiome Studies.  His laboratory at Stanford develops and employs diverse technologies to understand basic principles that govern interactions within the intestinal microbiota and between the microbiota and the host. An ongoing objective of the research program is to devise and implement innovative strategies to prevent and treat disease in humans via the gut microbiota. Justin conducted his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego in the laboratory of Ajit Varki.  His postdoctoral work was conducted at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri in the laboratory of Jeffrey Gordon.  He has received an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and Pioneer Award, the AGA Research Mentor Award, and co-founded Interface Biosciences. He and his wife and collaborator, Erica, are the authors of the book The Good Gut:  Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-Term Health.

Sean Spencer, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Stanford School of Medicine

Sean Spencer, MD, PhD is a Gastroenterologist and Physician Scientist at Stanford University working to uncover the role of dietary intake and the gut microbiome in gastrointestinal disease. Sean obtained his medical degree University of Pennsylvania, earning his PhD studying nutritional immunology with Yasmine Belkaid, PhD at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), after which he moved to Boston for residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and completed his Gastroenterology training at Stanford University. Sean has launched a microbiome-focused clinical practice at Stanford where he employs novel diagnostic and therapeutic modalities to better understand and treat his patients with GI disease.  

Cate Ward, PhD, RD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stanford Nutrition Studies Research Group

Cate Ward, PhD, RD is a dietitian scientist specializing in the interplay between diet and the gut microbiome. She holds a PhD in Metabolic Biology and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford School of Medicine, where she conducts interdisciplinary research, including contributing to the Maternal and Offspring Microbiome Study (MOMS). Dr. Ward also teaches the History of Nutrition Research at Stanford and continues to see patients through her private practice. Passionate about translating research into clinical applications, she focuses on advancing our understanding of metabolism and microbiome science to improve clinical practice. At the intersection of research and patient care, Dr. Ward is committed to shaping the future of nutrition and health care.

Kathryn Alexander, Human Biology Student, Stanford University

Kathryn Alexander is a junior studying Human Biology at Stanford University. She spent the summer researching with Stanford Nutrition Studies Research Group's 'Farm Camp,' a community collaboration with Santa Clara Unified School District. Along with co-counselor and researcher Isabel Preble, she employed a narrative-based intervention with the goal of changing vegetable preferences in children. She is fascinated by the intersections of human evolution, public health, and children’s nutrition. On campus, she’s a member of the Stanford Women’s Rowing team, is part of the Stanford Student-Athletes for Sustainability club and is continuing research with the Nutrition Studies Research Group. Kat spent the summer trail running around the Bay Area and cooking delicious veggies she brought home from Farm Camp.  

Patrick Archie, Director, Stanford Educational Farm, O'Donohue Educational Farm

Chef Andrew Mayne, Senior Associate Director of Culinary Event Strategy and Plant Award Experience Munger, Stanford University

Food is the conduit for relationships and experiences. Andrew works for Stanford Dining Hospitality and Auxiliaries.His focus is on teaching and creating culinary confidence using “Fiber First ” as the guiding light.

Izzy Preble, Human Biology Student, Stanford University

Izzy Preble is a junior studying Human Biology and Earth Systems at Stanford University. Her interests intersect human and planetary health, and she is particularly passionate about food systems. From nutrition, public health, and lifestyle medicine to climate ecology, agriculture, and environmental policy – Izzy advocates for sustainable solutions that foster longevity and wellness. Izzy is a member of the Stanford Nutrition Studies Research Group and spent the summer working at their Farm to Table Summer Camp. She and her colleague, Kathryn Alexander, collaborated with the Group’s community partnership with Santa Clara Unified School District’s organic farm summer program. They claimed dual roles of scientists and camp counselors – harvesting and preparing veggies with campers to investigate how farm-based education and narrative-building impact children’s vegetable preferences. Izzy spent the summer exploring the beauty of the Bay, hiking, running, gardening, and honing a life-long love for cooking with the flavors of the farm.

Rebecca Handler, MsC, Social Engagement Manager, Department of Medicine, Stanford School of Medicine

Rebecca Handler, MSc, is a science communications leader with a background in public health, specializing in translating complex medical research into clear, accessible content. Previously, she served as the Director of Communications at the Open Medicine Foundation, where she led global research efforts. Now, at Stanford's Department of Medicine, she applies strategic communication to amplify scientific discoveries and engage diverse audiences. Rebecca is passionate about leveraging communication to drive better health outcomes.

Lisa Kim, Senior Manager of Media Relations, Stanford Medicine/Stanford Health Care

Lisa Kim is Senior Manager of Media Relations for Stanford Medicine and Stanford Health Care. Lisa has a deep background in journalism, as she is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who has covered stories on both the national and local levels.