Patricia M. Guenther, PhD, RD, is a Research Professor in the Dept. of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology at the University of Utah. She also has an adjunct appointment in the Dept. of Biomedical Informatics. Her research interests center on improving dietary assessment methods by using interdisciplinary approaches. From 2003 to 2013, she was a nutritionist at the US Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, where she led the 2005 and 2010 revisions of the Healthy Eating Index and conducted other research related to dietary assessment and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Earlier Dr. Guenther was employed by the USDA Agricultural Research Service, where her work focused on developing improved methods for collecting and analyzing dietary survey data.

Dr. Guenther received her BS and MS degrees in nutrition from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and her PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park. She completed an internship in clinical dietetics at the University of Michigan Medical Center. Dr. Guenther is a registered dietitian, member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Society for Nutrition.