Paige Cunningham

Dr. Paige Cunningham is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Yale University where she began her research career investigating weight management, bias, and stigma. Her interest in the impact that eating behavior can have on obesity and health outcomes led her to pursue a PhD in Nutritional Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University under the mentorship of Dr. Barbara Rolls. During her PhD Paige developed expertise in ingestive behavior and satiation. She completed Postdoctoral training in the Penn State Sensory Evaluation Center under the mentorship of Dr. John Hayes. Her postdoctoral research investigated how physical, textural, and chemosensory properties of food influenced oral processing behaviors and eating rate, and their downstream effects on energy intake.

Overall, Dr. Cunningham’s work explores how different properties of foods and the environment affect eating behavior, appetite and energy intake. She also studies how different characteristics of individuals influence their eating behaviors and susceptibility to overconsumption. She believes that greater understanding of how common food properties influence what, and how much, people eat will provide insight into how to effectively leverage these properties to reduce overconsumption and obesity risk. She has won multiple awards from both national and international professional organizations for her work, including The Obesity Society and the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior.