Dr. Carla Prado

Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Honoree
2019

Associate Professor; Campus Alberta Innovates Program Chair in Nutrition, Food and Health & Director, Human Nutrition Research Unit
University of Alberta

Dr. Carla Prado is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta and a Registered Dietitian. She holds a Campus Alberta Innovates Chair in Nutrition, Food and Health and is the Director of the Human Nutrition Research Unit, a state-of-the-art research and training facility. Carla is an internationally recognized expert in body composition assessment. Her research program focuses on the identification and treatment of abnormalities in body composition (such as low muscle mass), with a special interest in cancer, a disease that affects one in four Canadians. Her research has shown that body composition predicts both response to therapy and survival in cancer. She is now designing targeted lifestyle interventions to change body composition and improve the health of people with cancer. Her vision and leadership on this topic are changing the way an individual is assessed and treated. Carla is also pioneering a number of community engagement endeavours. Her excellence spans the three pillars of academic commitment, having won several awards for her research, teaching and service. In 2017, Avenue Magazine Edmonton named Carla to its Top 40 Under 40 list, an award that celebrates Alberta’s most exceptional young leaders. She has shared her expertise in over 100 meetings worldwide and in many high-profile media outlets such as Forbes, The Atlantic, Marie Claire and Women’s Health. As a champion for women in science, Carla was recently featured as a prominent Canadian scientist on the CBC documentary Ms. Scientist.