Lawrence H. Kushi, ScD completed his doctoral studies at Harvard School of Public Health, and serves as Director of Scientific Policy at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, as well as Adjunct Professor at University of California Davis School of Medicine.  He previously held the Ella McCollum Vahlteich Chair in Human Nutrition in the Department of Health and Behavior Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University, and served at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.  He has also held research and faculty positions at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Washington and the University of Minnesota.  He is internationally recognized for his expertise in nutritional epidemiology, and his research interests focus on the role of diet and nutrition in the etiology of coronary artery disease and breast and other cancers.

Dr. Kushi is the author or co-author of 272 articles in peer-reviewed research journals.  He is a member of the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Integrative Cancer Therapies, and JCO Cancer Clinical Informatics, and has served as a reviewer for two dozen other journals.  He was formerly the Chair of the Food and Nutrition Section of the American Public Health Association, an Executive Committee member of the American Society of Preventive Oncology, and an Executive Committee member and Chair of the Diet Study Group of the American Society of Preventive Oncology.

Dr. Kushi has served the American Cancer Society as Chair of the Dietary Assessment Scientific Advisory Board for the Cancer Prevention Study-3, as well as on a grant review committee, and on various other committees that develop guidelines for the dietary prevention and management of cancer.  He has also served on review committees and research directions advisory committees for the Epidemiology and Disease Control Study Section of the National Institutes of Health, for the Integration Panel of the Breast Cancer Research Program of the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  He was a member of the NIH Consensus Development Panel on Acupuncture, and has served as an external advisor to MD Anderson’s Program on Complementary and Integrative Medicine Education Resources, and to a number of prospective studies of diet and cancer, including the Adventist Health Study.