Dr. Lichtenstein is the Stanley N. Gershoff Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy in the Friedman School, and Senior Scientist and Director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, both at Tufts University.  She holds a secondary appointment as Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at Tufts University School of Medicine and an honorary doctoral degree from the faculty of Medicine, University of Kuopio, Finland.  Dr. Lichtenstein completed her undergraduate work at Cornell University, and earned a masters and doctoral degree in Nutrition from Harvard University.  She received her post-doctoral training in the field of lipid metabolism at the Cardiovascular Institute at Boston University School of Medicine.

        At the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University Dr. Lichtenstein’s research group focuses on assessing the interplay between diet and heart disease risk factors.  Recent work as focused on trans fatty acids, soy protein and isoflavones, sterol/stanol esters, novel vegetable oils differing in fatty acid profile, and glycemic index in postmenopausal females and older males.  Selected issues are investigated in animal models with the aim of determining the mechanisms by which dietary factors alter cardiovascular disease risk.  Additional work addresses the relationship between cholesterol metabolism and heart disease risk, nutrient biomarkers and cardiovascular disease risk, and the application of systematic evidence based review methods to the field of nutrition. 

        Dr. Lichtenstein is a member of the American Heart Association’s Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism, and Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology Councils and the American Society for Nutrition.  She is the immediate past-chair of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee.  Dr. Lichtenstein is currently serving as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Lipid Research, on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Tufts Health and Nutrition Letter, and on the Editorial Board of Atherosclerosis.  She served on the USDA/HHS 2000 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and the 2003 Dietary Reference Intake Macronutrient Panel of the Institute of Medicine.  In 2006 she received the Robert H. Herman Memorial Award in Clinical Nutrition from the American Society for Nutrition and in 2007 she received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Heart Association’s Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism.