Kathleen Woolf

Kathleen Woolf, PhD, RDN, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food studies at New York University. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from Arizona State University and her dietetic internship at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. She holds a master’s degree in Public Health Nutrition from the University of California, Los Angeles and a PhD in Exercise Science from Arizona State University.

As a clinically-trained registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN) and exercise scientist, the overarching goal of her work is to examine the relationship of lifestyle behaviors to chronic disease and develop lifestyle behavioral interventions that may help reduce the incidence and burden of these costly and debilitating conditions. For both individuals and populations, lifestyle behaviors, such as nutrition, physical activity, and sleep, contribute to overall quality of life and play major roles in protecting health and delaying the progression of disease. Hippocrates wrote: “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.”  She has expertise in the assessment of lifestyle behaviors using various data collection methods and has successfully designed and implemented cross-sectional, qualitative, and mixed methods research as well as randomized clinical intervention trials that were administered in community, clinical, and laboratory settings. Dr. Woolf has published her findings in prominent peer-reviewed nutrition and health journals, such as the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, The American Journal of Cardiology, Journal of the American Heart Association, Current Nutrition Reports, Journal of Renal Nutrition, Childhood Obesity, American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, Coronary Artery Disease, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and Women’s Health. Her work has been funded by federal agencies and private foundations, including the United States Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, and the Purjes Foundation.

Dr. Woolf is committed to developing innovative training and experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate students to better prepare them to enter the future workforce and address critical public health challenges through actionable, evidenced-based solutions. She is the Co-Program Director for a USDA-funded Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates program (IMODEL: Inclusive Model for Developing Future Nutrition, Food, and Culinary Leaders). Because of her academic training in nutrition and exercise science, she continues to explore timely issues in sports nutrition in order to improve exercise performance, recovery, and health for athletes of all ages and abilities. 

Dr. Woolf’s professional societies include the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Academy), the American College of Sports Medicine, the American Society for Nutrition, and the American Public Health Association. As an RDN, she is an active member of national Dietetic Practice Groups of the Academy, having served in both elected and appointed positions within these organizations.  She has also served on the editorial boards of nutrition and exercise scholarly journals (Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, ACSM’s Health and Fitness Journal) and was recently appointed as an Associate Editor for Nutrition Reviews.