Elizabeth Widen, Ph.D., R.D.

Dr. Beth Widen is a Registered Dietitian and Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Nutritional Sciences within the School of Human Ecology in the College of Natural Sciences. Widen is faculty at Dell Pediatric Research Institute, faculty research associate at the Population Research Center, and affiliate faculty in the Departments of Women’s Health and Pediatrics at Dell Medical School. Widen is a nutritional and perinatal epidemiologist and her research takes a life course approach at the intersection of nutrition, perinatal, and pediatric epidemiology, and human biology. She develops and applies advanced analytic methods and interdisciplinary approaches to rigorously evaluate the role of nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life in relation to short and long-term health of mothers and their children.

Widen holds a BS in Dietetics from Miami University, and a PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to completing her PhD, Widen was an Intramural Research Training Award Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Following her PhD, she completed an interdisciplinary postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University in the Institute of Human Nutrition and the Department of Epidemiology.

Fun fact: Elizabeth is a fraternal twin! This sparked her interest in maternal and child health.