Barbara received her Ph.D. from Massey University (New Zealand) in 1997, and bachelor’s degree from University of California, Davis, in nutrition science and environmental toxicology in 1983.
From 2016 to 2021 she was professor at Massey University in the College of Health Sciences, and since then as adjunct professor at Massey’s Riddet Institute. Prior to this role, she worked for 16 years at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, as Senior Nutrition Officer and then as Chief/ Deputy Director of Nutrition. Before joining FAO, Professor Burlingame spent 12 years as Nutrition Programme Leader at the New Zealand Institute for Crop & Food Research and Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; and two years as an analyst at the National University of Singapore. Since 1982 when she was awarded a research grant from UC Davis’s President’s Undergraduate Fund for work on trace alkali metal analyses, food composition has been a major focus of her work.
She was coordinator of the International Network of Food Data Systems from 1993-2011, Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Journal of Food Composition and Analysis from 1998-2010, and lecturer in the Wageningen/UNU food composition course from 1996-2013. In addition to global level food composition activities, she has had a 30+ year relationship with both OCEANIAFOODS and ASEANFOODS, and active involvement with food composition programs in every region of the world. She has more than 150 publications on various aspects of food composition, including national and regional tables and databases, guidelines/manuals on laboratory procedures from sampling and sample preparation, to data documentation, dissemination, and use; papers in peer-reviewed journals, books, and book chapters on many different aspects, including integrating food composition into a range of sectors and disciplines.
She has been a member of many scientific advisory boards and international committees; author of many scientific papers and UN publications, book chapters and reference books; and editor of several food and nutrition journals, including 13 years as, and currently as Specialty Chief Editor at Frontiers.
Barbara chairs the Sustainable Diets Task Force for the International Union of Nutritional Sciences, she is a member of the Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems, co-chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub, and she recently completed two terms as a member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts for the Committee on World Food Security. She is a Council member and Fellow of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences.