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Dr. Cara L. Eckhardt is an Associate Professor and Director of the Ph.D. program in Community Health at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Eckhardt’s research focus is on how childhood growth trajectories are affected by maternal factors such as nutrition during pregnancy and gestational weight gain, and how particular infant growth patterns may predict subsequent risk for obesity. Additional work includes improving the validity and reliability of child growth pattern categorization as a screening method for obesity risk, and evaluating interventions to improve the diets of young children. Dr. Eckhardt earned her B.A. in Anthropology from Cornell University (1995), her M.P.H degree in Global Health from Emory University (1999), her Ph.D. in Nutrition and Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2004), and was a post-doctoral fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington D.C. (2004-2006).