Carmen Ortega-Santos, PhD, RD

Carmen Ortega-Santos, PhD, RD, is an Assistant Professor of the Exercise and Nutrition Sciences Department at the Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University. Dr. Ortega-Santos was trained in Obesity, Metabolism, and Diabetes as a T32 postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado-Anschutz Medical Campus and the Colorado Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC) for two and a half years. She earned her Ph.D. in Exercise and Nutritional Sciences at Arizona State University, focusing on nutrition and exercise's synergistic and independent effects on the gut microbiome. Dr. Ortega-Santos also holds a Master of Science in Integrative Physiology from the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Ortega-Santos’s research focuses on coupling nutrition with exercise prescriptions to modify the gut microbiome and improve metabolic health, with a particular interest in female adults with obesity. In addition, her research explores gut health in the athletic population through prebiotics.