Meet the Faculty: Sonja Y. Hess, PhD
Dr. Sonja Hess serves as the Interim Director of the Institute for Global Nutrition at UC Davis, where she holds a position as Research Nutritionist. Her research interest lies in the assessment and prevention of vitamin and mineral deficiencies in low- and middle-income countries. Over the past two decades she has worked closely with many collaborators in Africa, Asia and Latin America aiming to improve nutrition and health of young children and women. She has a long publication record with over 130 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in global nutrition.
Dr. Hess was fascinated at a young age by the impact of diet on human wellbeing and health. Growing up in Switzerland, where a master’s degree in Nutritional Sciences was not available at the time, she decided to study Food Science Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Zurich. For her master thesis, she was offered the opportunity to conduct a research project on salt iodization and iodine status in Côte d’Ivoire. She not only enjoyed learning about research methods but also loved meeting families in rural villages of northern Côte d’Ivoire while conducting in-home dietary assessments. She decided to continue in this line of work and earned a PhD in Human Nutrition from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Dr. Hess joined the Program in International Nutrition at UC Davis (renamed to the Institute for Global Nutrition in 2019) as a post-doctoral research fellow in 2005. She served as Executive Officer of the International Zinc Nutrition Consultative Group (IZiNCG) from 2005 to 2015. During the period from 2007 to 2010, she was based in Dakar, Senegal at the Africa Regional Office of Helen Keller International, where she continued in her role with IZiNCG and collaborated in zinc intervention trials in Burkina Faso. In recent years, she collaborated with researchers of the Lao Tropical and Public Health Institute to study thiamine deficiency and infantile beriberi and the Fruit and Vegetables for a Sustainable Healthy Diet (FRESH) Initiative led by CGIAR to increase the intake of fruit and vegetables. Together with collaborators from the Micronutrient Forum and UC Berkeley, she is working on innovative approaches to estimate the prevalence of vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Dr. Hess lives in a rural part of the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children where they make wine and olive oil and grow many fruits and vegetables. She enjoys raising chickens and her daily walks with her two dogs.
Link to faculty profile: https://nutrition.ucdavis.edu/people/sonja-hess