Meredith T. Niles, PhD

BIO

Dr. Meredith Niles is a professor and the Robert L. Bickford Endowed Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Vermont and also teaches and advises in the food systems program.  Meredith previously served as the Associate Director of the Food Systems Research Center and as Acting Director of the Gund Institute for Environment at UVM.  Prior to her academic career, Meredith worked for the United States Department of State in HIV/AIDS public health and for several food and environmental non-profit organizations. 

Meredith thrives conducting applied research that can help bring together diverse stakeholders- from farm to federal agency- to help solve pressing problems facing our world's food system.  Meredith is an interdisciplinary food systems scientist whose research focuses on advancing efforts to achieve sustainable food security and improve health, environmental, and rural livelihood outcomes in food systems, including in two key areas: Farmer's adoption of sustainable management practices and policy implications, and food and nutritional security during crises, including climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. Meredith is deeply committed to ensuring academic research is available to the public and stakeholders to meet a land-grant mission, evidenced through policy briefs and open science principles.  Meredith has received notable honors and recognition for her research, most recently being named an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar for 2022-2025 by the National Academy of Medicine and receiving the Vogelmann Award for Research in 2024 from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at UVM.

Courses

• NFS 4286: Senior Seminar: Nutrition, Sustainability and Society
• NFS 6232: Intro to Research Methods

Publications

Google Scholar

Awards and Achievements

• Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar (2022-2025), National Academy of Medicine
• Civil Eats, March 23, 2021.  20 Hotspots to start fixing nitrogen pollution in agriculture.
• BBC Newsday.  January 2021. (Live radio interview).  How climate change is affecting kids’ nutrition.
• Forbes, January 2021. Climate change pushing up child malnutrition levels, finds 19-country study.
• National Public Radio, November 20, 2020. Farmers Are Warming Up To The Fight Against Climate Change
• Vermont Public Radio Vermont Edition (Live Interview), April 26, 2020.  Rising food insecurity and hunger relief amid the pandemic.
• Vermont Public Radio, January 22, 2020.  Vermonters want to keep food waste out of landfills- they just don’t want to pay for it.
• The Takeaway (WYNC NPR Studios), September 10, 2019.  What is the United States doing about food waste?
• New York Times, September 8, 2019.  The world wastes tons of food. A grocery happy hour is one answer.
• Times Higher Education, July 27, 2019.  Academics think, ‘others value journal prestige and metrics, not me’
• Vermont Public Radio Vermont Edition, October 30, 2018. (Live interview). How our food choices can affect climate change.
• Newsweek, May 13, 2018. Americans Waste 150,000 Tons of Food Every Day—That's a Pound Per Person.
• USA Today, April 19, 2018. Americans waste an astounding amount of food — and healthy eaters are the worst. Story also appeared in at least 40 other outlets via the USA Today Network.
• Washington Post, April 18, 2018. The staggering environmental footprint of all the food that we just throw in the trash. Story appeared in at least 20 other sites via the Washington Post newswire

Area(s) of expertise

• Food Systems Sustainability
• Food Policy
• Food Security
• Farmer Behavior
• Social-Ecological Systems