UMass Amherst Names Anna Maria Siega-Riz As Dean of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences

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AMHERST, Mass. – Anna Maria Siega-Riz, professor of nursing and associate dean for research at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Nursing, has been named the new dean of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The announcement was made by               John J. McCarthy, provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs.

She currently serves on the National Institutes of Health Council and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Health and Medicine Division Advisory Committee. Previously, she served on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Federal Advisory Committee, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Advisory Council and the USDA/DHHS Pregnancy Technical Expert Committee, B-24 Months Project. 

Siega-Riz also has a joint appointment in the departments of public health sciences and obstetrics and gynecology in the UVA School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the connection between maternal health, preconceptionally and during pregnancy, and health outcomes. Her current work is on dietary patterns and health outcomes among Hispanics as well as nutritional factors associated with early childhood weight status. Over her career, she has garnered more than $11 million in research funding.

McCarthy said, “With her breadth of leadership experience and outstanding research record, Dr. Siega-Riz promises to be a great dean of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences as it moves into its next era.”

Siega-Riz received her bachelor’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, an MS in food and nutrition from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in nutrition and epidemiology from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Prior to her work at the University of Virginia, she was associate dean for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and leader of its Reproductive, Perinatal, and Pediatric Program in its Department of Epidemiology.