Susan E. Carlson PhD

Susan Carlson, Ph.D., is the AJ Rice Professor of Nutrition in the KU Department of Dietetics and Nutrition at KU Medical Center. She was appointed associate dean for research in the KU School of Health Professions and began that additional role in September 2017.

Carlson received her bachelor's degree in home economics at Washington State University in 1969 and her doctorate in nutrition with minors in biochemistry and physiology from Iowa State University in 1975. She had NICHD postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Wisconsin in the Department of Pathology (1975-1977) and at the University of South Florida in the Department of Pediatrics (1978-1979).

A faculty member in several medical school departments of pediatrics, mainly in divisions of newborn medicine from 1979-1997, Carlson rose through the ranks to professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology and Biochemistry at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, Tenn. Her major research interest was on the effects of fatty acids that compose a large percent of brain membranes and found in human milk but not in vegetable oils typically used in the production of U.S. infant formulas.