David Allison

Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington | Bloomington, IN | 2006

David Allison Portrait Photo

The official biography below was current at the time of the award. Awardees may choose to provide their latest biographical information on their profile page.

David B. Allison received his Ph.D. from Hofstra University in 1990. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a second post-doctoral fellowship at the NIH-funded New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Center. He was a research scientist at the NY Obesity Research Center and Associate Professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons until 2001.

In 2001, he joined the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he is currently Distinguished Professor, Quetelet Endowed Professor of Public Health, Associate Dean for Science, Director of Office of Energetics, and Director of the NIH-funded Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC). He has authored over 450 scientific publications and edited five books. He has won several awards, including the 2002 Lilly Scientific Achievement Award from The Obesity Society (TOS) (formerly known as North American Association for the Study of Obesity, NAASO), the 2002 Andre Mayer Award from the International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO), and the National Science Foundation Administered 2006 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). In 2009, he was awarded the Centrum Award from the American Society of Nutrition (ASN) and the TOPS research achievement award from the Obesity Society. In 2013, he was awarded the Alabama Academy of Science's "Wright A. Gardner" award and the American Society of Nutrition's (ASN) "Dannon Institute Mentorship" award. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) in 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2009, and inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2013. He holds several NIH grants, including one of the Common Fund's NIH Director's Transformative Research Award (TR01) entitled " Energetics, Disparities, & Lifespan A unified hypothesis". He has been a member of the Board of Trustees for the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), North America, since 2002 of which he is currently the Chair. In 2012 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

He serves or has served on the editorial boards of: Journal of Diabetes Research and Clinical Metabolism (JDRCM); Behavior Genetics; Clinical Pharmacology: Advances and Applications; Computational Statistics and Data Analysis; European Journal of Clinical Investigation; Global Epidemic Obesity; Human Heredity; International Journal of Eating Disorders; International Journal of Obesity; International Scholarly Research Network (ISRN) Nutrition; Journal of Obesity; Nutrients; Nutrition and Dietary Supplements; Nutrition Today; Obesity Reviews; Obesity; PeerJ; Public Library of Science (PLOS) Genetics and Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases (SOARD).

Dr. Allison is also proud to be the founding Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Genetics.

Dr. Allison's research interests include obesity, quantitative genetics, clinical trials, and statistical and research methodology. He also serves as a frequent consultant and expert witness in the legal setting.