Elizabeth Dennis, PhD, RD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and a Research Health Science Specialist within the Research and Development Service at the Baltimore VA. She is a member of the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Pepper Center. She received both her bachelor’s degree and PhD in Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise from Virginia Tech, and completed her dietetic internship at Marywood University. Her research at Virginia Tech focused on beverage intake and adult weight management, and during her post-doctoral training, she explored dietary intake habits of African American breast cancer survivors.  Following her post-doctoral training, she worked for the USDA Food Surveys Research Group where she received specialized training in dietary intake methodology and the Automated Multiple Pass Method used to collect dietary intake in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. At UMSOM, her work focuses on lifestyle interventions to improve health and chronic disease related outcomes, particularly in populations at high risk for obesity. Her AHA Career Development Award evaluated teacher workplace health behaviors, such as diet, physical activity and work-related stress, and how changes to the school environment may positively impact these behaviors. 

More recently, her research has focused on older Veterans with impaired mobility and older adults living in high food priority areas, exploring how disability negatively impacts dietary quality, and identifying barriers to consuming a healthy diet among this population. This research is funded by both a VA Merit and NINR R01. She is the PI of the NIH SEPA funded RAMP Program, a summer research training program that targets 11th and 12th grade high school students from Baltimore City and provides foundational knowledge required to understand concepts across the translational research continuum while providing the skills to perform basic lab techniques and clinical skills.