April 27, 2010
Dr. Gita Sharma

Dr. Gita Sharma
Dr. Barry Popkin

Dr. Barry Popkin

Two nutrition faculty members at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health have received high recognition from the United Kingdom’s Nutrition Society. Barry Popkin, PhD, Carla Smith Chamblee Distinguished Professor of Global Nutrition, is the 2010 recipient of The Rank Prize, the Society’s highest honor, and Gita Sharma, PhD, associate professor of nutrition, has received the prestigious Silver Medal.

 
Popkin and Sharma will accept their awards and present, respectively, the Rank and Silver Medal lectures at the Society’s June meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.
 
Popkin joined the UNC nutrition faculty as an assistant professor in 1977 and became a professor in 1986.
 
He is frequently called upon as an international expert in global health issues, especially regarding obesity and nutritional transition. He was invited to address the United Nations Commission on Population and Development on April 14, on the topic of “Global Economic and Health Change: Problems and Solutions.”
 
Popkin’s Nutrition Society Lecture is titled, “Contemporary Nutritional Transition: Determinants of Diet and its Impact on Body Composition.”
 
Sharma was a postdoctoral research and faculty member at University of Hawaii from 2001 to 2008, when she joined the UNC faculty at the Nutrition Research Institute in Kannapolis, N.C.
 
Her research combines nutritional sciences, epidemiology, and community-based interventions especially the development of dietary assessment methodologies for multi-ethnic populations, including African-Americans, Japanese Brazilians, Native Hawaiians, and American Indians.
 
“We are extremely proud of the outstanding nutrition research done by Barry and Gita and very happy to see them recognized internationally for their contributions,” said June Stevens, PhD, AICR/WCRF Distinguished Professor of nutrition and epidemiology and chair of the Department of Nutrition.

 

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.

 

 

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