Jessica Rigutto-Farebrother

Jessica Rigutto-Farebrother is a passionate human nutrition scientist interested in addressing health inequalities using innovative nutrition solutions and targeted implementation strategies. She is a Senior Assistant in the Laboratory for Nutrition and Metabolic Epigenetics, ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and has joined the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child from January 1, 2023 as a visiting scientist, to develop the Global Center’s research and implementation agenda to include nutrition.

Jessica’s research interests lie in improving micronutrient nutrition, with a particular focus on iodine, iron, and thyroid health through the life cycle. Her research studies have taken her to Kenya, Tanzania, The Gambia, Morocco, South Africa, and the Philippines, and most recently, Haiti where she has recently completed a study in collaboration with the GC-DWC and the University of Notre Dame Haiti-Hinche to assess population iodine status in remote, disadvantaged regions of the Central Plateau. This work showed improvements in iodine nutrition of the population living in these areas and strongly supports the GC-DWC's ongoing Bon Sel social enterprise initiative in Haiti. Future research efforts will aim to strengthen and support current and planned GC-DWC educational initiatives by including a nutrition element, both through intervention studies and through implementation research.

Aside from research activities, Jessica teaches nutrition and nutrition research methodology to under- and post-graduate students, and supervises students to PhD level through their dissertations. She remains involved with the OpeN-Global knowledge hub that she co-created during postdoctoral studies at King’s College London, a resource that provides guidance and support on the assessment and interpretation of nutrient status biomarkers in nutrition and health surveys and research globally. She also leads a Federation of European Nutrition Societies working group on a project in their “Improving Standards in the Science of Nutrition” initiative, which aims to improve reporting from nutrition trials, thereby improving translatability of results to public health policy. Jessica has numerous publications in the scientific press, is an editorial board member for the Nutrition Evidence Database, and works closely with WHO, UNICEF and other international organizations to provide advice on iodine policy globally.

Jessica holds master’s degrees in Pharmacy (UK) and International Public Health (France) in addition to a Doctor of Science in Human Nutrition from ETH Zürich, Switzerland. She is fluent in English and French with conversational German and a few words of Swahili. In addition to travel for her research, she has lived and worked in Chad and D. R. Congo, as well as France, the UK, and Switzerland.