Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Shilpa Bhupathiraju
Dr. Bhupathiraju is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Assistant Professor in Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research examines the role of diet and lifestyle in the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases with a special emphasis on high-risk groups such as Hispanics and South Asians.
In the US, she has collaborated with researchers of the MASALA (Mediators of Atherosclerosis among South Asians Living in America) study to examine how South Asian dietary patterns influence cardiometabolic risk among immigrant Asian Indians. In India, Dr. Bhupathiraju frequently collaborates with the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation on nutritional data analysis and interpretation. She recently led the India module in developing and validating a global diet quality metric applicable to low- and middle-income countries that can capture both nutrient inadequacy and the double burden of disease. Currently, Dr. Bhupathiraju is leading a community intervention study that aims to lower cardiometabolic risk through health awareness and nutrition education in Bathinda, Punjab. In addition to her work among the South Asian region, Dr. Bhupathiraju leads several research grants in the US, leveraging omic technologies to understand mechanisms underlying disease progression and to identify dietary biomarkers of foods and dietary patterns. She is the Project Director of the Dietary Biomarker Development Center at Harvard University, and teaches two graduate courses at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.