Marissa Burgermaster, PhD, MA is a behavioral nutrition scientist and informaticist. She is joint appointed in the Department of Nutritional Sciences in the College of Natural Sciences and the Department of Population Health at UT’s Dell Medical School. Her research applies biomedical informatics methods to improve nutrition and community health. The goal of this research is to improve chronic disease prevention and management, with a special focus on vulnerable populations. She has developed personalized nutrition decision support technologies funded by RWJF and AHRQ and is currently PI of a trial assessing the impact of ultra-processed plant-based meat on breastmilk composition.  Dr. Burgermaster leads an interdisciplinary team of health information technology, user experience, behavioral nutrition, and clinician researchers to develop and test software to be deployed in real-world clinics serving patients from low income and minoritized communities. This work has led to the development of Nutri©, a novel interactive software enabling primary care physicians (PCPs) to address diet consistently and effectively at the point of care. Previously, she held an early career award from the New York Academy of Sciences Nutrition Program to support her work developing methods for psychosocial-behavioral phenotyping, a method she developed to support precision health (a behavioral science analogue of precision medicine). In 2023, Dr. Burgermaster received an early-stage investigator award for this work at the National Institute of Health’s 16^th Matilda White Riley Honors in Behavioral and Social Sciences.

Prior to joining the faculty at UT, Dr. Burgermaster completed a postdoctoral fellowship in biomedical informatics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center where she conducted research on technologies for diabetes management among underserved New Yorkers and completed masters in biomedical informatics. She led a sequential multiple assignment randomized trial (SMART) of Platano, a motivationally-tailored app for underserved patients with diabetes, and was also the behavioral nutrition lead for the CUIMC-based team that developed “Taming Type 2 Diabetes Together (T2D2),” a voice application for personalized nutrition and diabetes self-management that was a finalist in the 2017 Alexa Diabetes Challenge and the 2017 World Cup of Voice Tech in Diabetes. Dr. Burgermaster holds a PhD in Behavioral Nutrition from Columbia University, where her research at Teachers College’s Tisch Center for Food, Education, & Policy focused on improving the evaluation of school-based childhood obesity prevention interventions. Dr. Burgermaster holds an MS in Nutrition & Food Science from Montclair State University and an MAEd in Curriculum and Instruction from William & Mary. She previously had a career as a teacher and school administrator.