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I design culturally relevant interventions, in partnership with community stakeholders, that aim to improve diet, health, and overall wellbeing of adolescents that reside in urban communities. I am deeply committed to conducting research that informs public health programming and policy. As such, the majority of my research studies have a clearly identified plan for translation from the very beginning.  

Roger Figueroa, is the Director and Founder of the Figueroa Interdisciplinary Group (FIG) Lab, and Assistant Professor in Social and Behavioral Science in Nutrition in the Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS), College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. In the FIG Lab, the research team designs testable conceptual frameworks, measures, and multi-faceted research studies to understand how policy, systems, and environmental factors influence diet- and health-related outcomes. Dr. Figueroa is a transdisciplinary scientist with expertise in

Juan Pablo Peña-Rosas is a professor fellow at the Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health at Cornell Human Ecology. He previously worked as Head, Global Health Initiatives (cross-cutting) team, Office of the Director, Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, Division of Healthier Populations (HEP) and served senior-level positions at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva since he joined in July 2008. He also worked as an active member of the WHO

My work takes a behavioral ecology perspective on understanding the reciprocal relationships between environments, brains, and behaviors in humans.  Specifically, my lab, the Life History Lab, looks at how social and physical affordances in development and in the present impact neural sensitivity to rewards and punishment, vigilance, cognitive load, and stress as well positive stimuli like social support and contemplative practices. These sensitivities can encourage certain behaviors and be influenced by them, creating emergent ecologies

Misha N. Ailsworth (formerly Inniss-Thompson) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Dr. Ailsworth received her doctorate in Community Research and Action at Vanderbilt University. She is an alumnus of Cornell's Department of Human Development. During her undergraduate career, she was a Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Scholar.

Dr. Ailsworth’s research examines the impact of families, communities, and schools in shaping Black girls’ mental health and wellness using a cultural-assets perspective.