LEARN ABOUT OUR TEAM
RESEARCH GROUP SPECIALIZING IN DIGITAL FOOD ENVIRONMENTS
Awareness,
collaboration,
capacity
OUR VISION
Our vision is to integrate digital components of the food environment into research and health practice.
OUR MISSION
Our team is dedicated to creating awareness about the impacts of digital food environments on health and nutrition, to foster collaborations, and to build research and public health capacity to address rapidly evolving and emerging challenges.
RESEACHERS
Dr. Fernandez is an Assistant Professor with the School of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Ottawa and an Adjunct Professor with the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on understanding how the Internet and new technologies influence the way that consumers purchase and communicate about food. The aim of her research is to develop strategies that will support the public navigate healthy food choices in increasingly complex digital environments.
Dr. Fernandez is actively conducting research on digital food retail (i.e., online groceries, food delivery apps, and meal kits), nutrition influencers, navigating nutrition (mis)information on social media, and studying connections between food literacy, mental health, and wellbeing.
Before joining the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Fernandez completed CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship with the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. Her doctoral work at Université Laval involved evaluating a national mass media campaign that promoted food skills to Canadian parents. She is a registered dietitian, the Associate Editor / French Editor of the Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research, and is an active member of the Canadian Nutrition Society.
Melissa is committed to fostering collaborative and inclusive research environments and mentoring trainees to build research capacity and interest in digital food environments.
Dr. Kim Raine is Distinguished Professor in the School of Public Health, University of Alberta. She is a Registered Dietitian, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
A pioneer in bringing social scientific concepts to the study of nutrition and health, her innovative research has shown dietary patterns as deeply contextualized behaviours embedded in complex food environments. Her research program broke new ground by exploring food environments, and how they shape the availability, affordability, and social acceptability of dietary patterns, as well as their association with health‐related outcomes.
Dr. Raine’s research led the way in demonstrating that the public’s health depends on improving food environments, making them important targets for intervention. Her research moved nutrition interventions upstream by pioneering social‐ecological thinking in nutrition, as well as demonstrating the potential of large‐scale population interventions at community and policy levels.
Dr. Raine’s team is at the leading edge of the exponential growth of research in food environments in Canada over the last decade and her team is now spearheading the development of research priorities to investigate emerging issues related to digital food environments.
CURRENT TRAINEES
Maha Hommos is a Master’s student in Nutrition at the University of Ottawa.
She is passionate about women’s health, digital innovation, and empowering health professionals. Her interests lie in social media strategy, digital health communication, and knowledge translation. Her research explores dietitians’ social media needs to enhance their visibility and public engagement.
Maha Hommos
Noor Ul Huda
Noor is a Master’s student at the School of Nutrition Sciences, University of Ottawa.
She is passionate about health equity and enhancing the accessibility of nutritional resources. For her Master’s thesis, she is doing a food literacy project aimed at individuals with cognitive disabilities, striving to adapt current nutritional resources in to a more accessible format.
Kevin Sun
Kevin is a new graduate student at the lab who graduated from the nutrition program at McGill University in 2022.
His project focuses on the potential association between Canadian adults' choice of online food purchasing service and their dietary preferences. In his spare time, he helps out at a local army cadet unit and enjoys playing board games.
Pei Zhao
Pei is a Master's student with the School of Nutrition at the University of Ottawa.
Nicholas Russel
Research Assistant
Rita El-Dik
Dietetics Student Volunteer
Lindsay Zhou
Dietetics Student Volunteer
PAST TRAINEES
uOttawa MSc students
Tanya Tanya, 2023-2025
Andrew Milks, 2022-2024
uOttawa Visiting Research Students
Liliana Borda Esquivel, 2025
Diana Valdés Ramírez, 2025
Luz Amani Trevino Cuellar, 2024
Regina Cortes Lozano, 2024
Anna Carolina Moguel Lee, 2024
uOttawa Research Assistants
Gyselle de Geus, 2024
Isabella Pagotto, 2022-2024
U of A Research Assistants
Jessica Dugan, 2020-2023
Anne Caretero, 2020
U of A Dietetics Students
Pauline Nguyen, 2021-2022
Aviva Sharma, 2021-2022
Kelly Hoang, 2020-2021
Jorie Smith, 2020-2021
Anne Caretero, 2019-2020
Nancy Gammack, 2019-2020
U of A WISEST Students
Eyasu Jacob, 2020
Josh Karathra, 2020
Adnan Black, 2019