Training Perspectives from the NIH T32 Artificial Intelligence for Precision Nutrition Programs

Nutrition is one of the few modifiable risk factors for health status. The diet-disease relationship, however, is highly complex, with many endogenous and exogenous factors contributing to risk and with variation in responses to diet between individuals. The 2020-30 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Strategic Plan for Nutrition Research states that precision nutrition is a unifying and holistic approach to developing comprehensive and dynamic nutritional recommendations relevant to both individual and population health. Recognizing the growing importance of advanced computational approaches in nutrition research, in 2022 the NIH Office of Nutrition Research and participating NIH Institutes and Centers published a Funding Opportunity Announcement for training programs in AI for Precision Nutrition (AIPrN) aiming to develop a new generation of the scientific workforce, literate in both nutritional and computer sciences, that leverages the growing data resources available for nutrition research to tackle complex and emerging health-disease associations. In this paper, we describe the approaches developed by the first four institutional awardees of the T32 AIPrN training grant, and we highlight applied strategies for interdisciplinary training, data integration, and methodological innovation as the research community prepares to analyze and interpret data generated by major initiatives such as the NIH-funded Nutrition for Precision Health Initiative.