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Naomi K. Fukagawa, MD, PhD

Professor Emerita of Medicine
University of Vermont, Vermont, United States


Naomi K. Fukagawa, MD, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Medicine at the University of Vermont (UVM). From 2015-2025, she was the Director of the USDA ARS Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, Beltsville, MD where she spearheaded the development and release of USDA FoodData Central, an integrated data system that provides comprehensive information on the composition of foods and food products. She received her MD degree from Northwestern U, Chicago IL and her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge MA. Her clinical training included residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, U Pennsylvania, Chief Residency at UVM, and nutrition/gerontology fellowships at the Children’s Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA. Dr. Fukagawa is a board-certified pediatrician with expertise in nutritional biochemistry and metabolism and the role of diet in aging and chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus. She was on the faculty of MIT, Harvard and Rockefeller Universities. She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering, and Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition (ASN). She was President of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition and ASN, Associate Editor for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Editor-in-Chief of Nutrition Reviews. She was the Vice-Chair of the 2010 USDA/HHS Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and served for a decade on the Food Forum of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, and Sodium Technical Committee of the Institute for Food and Nutritional Sciences. Her research ranges from cells and animals to in vivo studies in human volunteers with recent focus on the impact of environmental stressors (metabolic or physical) on human health, specifically the effects of exposure to petrodiesel and biodiesel exhaust and alternative fuel sources that may divert food crops to fuel production.

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