Amy R. Nichols

Amy R. Nichols, PhD, MS, RD (she/her) joined CoRAL as a Research Fellow in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. Building on her extensive experience as a Registered Dietitian in maternal and child nutrition, her interdisciplinary and translational research focuses on the nutritional, biological, and social aspects of the preconception period through the first 1000 days with an emphasis on modifiable determinants of health that affect the lifecourse. Leveraging data from Project Viva, the focus of her fellowship is to examine the extent to which evidence of impaired fertility is associated with body composition, bone health, and cardiometabolic outcomes among females in midlife. Previously, her doctoral work utilized advanced trajectory modeling to investigate effects of prenatal nutrition exposures on short-term maternal and neonatal outcomes in high-risk pregnancies affected by obesity or multiple gestations. This work was partially funded by the American Society for Nutrition and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Amy holds a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin, MS in Food Science and Human Nutrition from Colorado State University, and BA in English and Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.