Amanda Macfarlane BSc, PhD

Amanda MacFarlane, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist in the Nutrition Research Division, Food Directorate, Health Canada. She received her Ph.D. in 2004 in Biochemistry in the lab of Dr. Fraser Scott from the University of Ottawa. Her PhD work focused on defining the mechanism by which diet promotes autoimmune diabetes via an abnormal immune response in the gut for which she won the 2003 Ron Oelbaum Award for an Outstanding Canadian Research Scientist under the age of 35 from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. She did her Post-Doctoral research in the lab of Dr. Patrick Stover in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University where she examined the effect of altered folate metabolism on genome stability and gene expression in colon cancer. She joined Health Canada as a Research Scientist in 2008. Her research examines the biochemical, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that underlie relationships between folic acid and chronic disease with a focus on cancer. In addition, she uses biochemical and molecular genetics approaches to study the impact of maternal dietary folate status during pregnancy on disease susceptibility in the offspring.