Aline Andres, PhD, RD

Research Overview

Dr. Andres is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UAMS, leads the Clinical Research Core and directs the Clinical Nutrition Lab at ACNC. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture, a Master’s in Nutrition, and a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joined the ACNC in 2007 as a Postdoctoral Fellow before being appointed as to the faculty in 2008. Her research interests are focused on optimizing pediatric nutrition to prevent childhood and adult diseases, and on understanding the effects of the pregnancy environment on the future health and development of children. When not working, she enjoys time outside with her family and friends, yoga, meditation, traveling, cooking and eating!

Research Interests

Our research program is dedicated to examining the effects of prenatal and postnatal nutrition on anthropometrics, body composition, metabolism and physical activity of infants and children. The main focus of our research is investigating how nutrition can influence child’s growth and development during a very critical period, the first 1000 days of life, which include prenatal and postnatal periods. Maternal health, body composition and nutrition are all important factors that can influence fetal and neonatal development. In addition, early infant nutrition, growth and body composition may also have short and long-term consequences to child’s growth and development. Our laboratory collaborates with multiple other laboratories at ACNC and other institutions to tackle these complex questions using multi-disciplinary approaches.