Sessions
Cancer and Nutrition
1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Thu
Dr. Heber is the founding director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),where he has been on the faculty of the School of Medicine since 1978. He is currently professor emeritus of Medicine and Public Health and founding chief of the Division of Clinical Nutrition in the Department of Medicine of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. His main research interests are obesity treatment and nutrition for cancer prevention and treatment. He was the Director and Principal Investigator of the NCI-Funded UCLA Clinical Nutrition Research Unit from 1991 to 2006. He has edited three editions of professional texts on Nutrition and Cancer (Nutrition Oncology (2001(Elsevier), 2006(Elsevier), and 2021(CRC Press)). He currently editing a textbook on Precision Nutrition (Elsevier) which highlights the potential of linking Precision Oncology and Precision Nutrition in cancer prevention, treatment, and survivorship.
Additionally, Dr. Heber directed both the National Cancer Institute-funded Clinical Nutrition Research Unit and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) nutrition and obesity training grants at UCLA for over 15 years. For five years he also directed the NIH-funded UCLA Center for Dietary Supplement Research in Botanicals. He is the former chair of the Medical Nutrition Council of the American Society for Nutrition, the largest scientific society in nutrition. Dr. Heber is a fellow of the American Society for Nutrition, the highest honor the society confers.
In addition to writing more than 240 peer-reviewed scientific articles and several professional texts, Dr. Heber has written four books for the public, including “Natural Remedies for a Healthy Heart,” “The Resolution Diet,” “What Color Is Your Diet?” and “The L.A. Shape Diet.” He is included in Thomson Reuters’ The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014 list, and from 2002 to 2012, he was part of the top one percent of scientists whose work was cited by other authors of scientific papers in the field of agricultural sciences, as surveyed by Thomson Reuters.
Dr. Heber graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in chemistry from UCLA in 1969. He also received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1973 and a Ph.D. in physiology from UCLA in 1978. He is board certified in internal medicine, endocrinology and metabolism by the American Board of Internal Medicine and is a certified physician nutrition specialist. In his spare time, Dr. Heber enjoys golfing, reading and painting.