Mandy Brown Belfort, MD MPH is a neonatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics at Mass General Brigham, and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She leads an NIH-funded program of research focused on the influence of early-life diet on health outcomes later in life. Current observational and interventional studies address nutritional challenges specific to very preterm infants, with an emphasis on the NICU hospitalization as a critical window of opportunity for effective interventions. She incorporates innovative nutritional status indicators including body composition analysis and neuroimaging-based indicators of brain development. She also leads collaborative epidemiological research examining aspects of diet such as human milk and growth patterns in large cohorts of very preterm-born children. Dr. Belfort’s work has been published widely and informs public health recommendations and clinical practices related to breastfeeding and nutritional approaches within neonatal intensive care.