Meet the Faculty: Lauren Au
Dr. Lauren Au is an Associate Professor of Nutrition at UC Davis. Her work focuses on harnessing artificial intelligence to improve dietary assessment technologies and examining how cross-utilization of nutrition safety net programs influences nutrition security and health outcomes. She has extensive experience evaluating nutrition policy changes within the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and the National School Lunch Program.
Dr. Au originally planned to become an orthodontist while she was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. However, after losing her parents to chronic diseases at a young age, she recognized the importance of prevention and shifted her academic focus to nutrition and dietetics. She went on to earn a Master’s degree in Nutrition and Public Health and completed her dietetic internship at Columbia University. During her internship, Dr. Au became particularly engaged in her research rotation involving dietary assessment in controlled human feeding trials. After a brief period working in clinical dietetics, she pursued a PhD in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition at Tufts University, where her dissertation focused on vitamin D among school-aged children in the greater Boston community.
Motivated to translate nutrition science into policy action, Dr. Au spent a year as an AAAS Congressional Fellow working on nutrition legislation in the U.S. Senate. She later realized that her primary passion was generating the scientific evidence needed to inform and drive policy change, which led to her early career as a researcher at the UC Nutrition Policy Institute. Through her interdisciplinary work, Dr. Au continues to advance evidence-based nutrition policy and develop next-generation dietary assessment tools aimed at improving nutrition security and preventing obesity in vulnerable populations.
Dr. Au lives in Oakland with her husband, two children, and mail-eating dog, Katsu. She is an avid marathon swimmer and can often be found swimming without a wetsuit in San Francisco’s Aquatic Park.
Link to faculty profile: https://nutrition.ucdavis.edu/people/lauren-au