Marissa Burgermaster

Dr. Marissa Burgermaster is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin and in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Dell Medical School. She holds a PhD in behavioral nutrition and a postdoctoral master's in biomedical informatics, both from Columbia University. Her research asks whether the nutrition guidance and tools reaching patients and families actually work. Dr. Burgermaster leads an interdisciplinary team of behavioral nutrition, technology, and clinician researchers who develop and test interventions to support dietary behavior change in real-world clinics, including a clinical decision support tool that helps primary care providers counsel patients on nutrition. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the USDA, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and the New York Academy of Sciences, and ranges from feeding trials on ultra-processed food and human milk composition to implementation trials of food is medicine approaches to reduce diabetes risk. 

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.

Dr. Burgermaster uses data and technology to improve behavioral nutrition and health behavior change intervention design and evaluation for promoting health equity in chronic disease prevention and management. Her research applies data science and human-computer interaction methods to improve nutrition and community health.