Dr. Susan Mayne, PhD, has been appointed Professor of Epidemiology (Adjunct) in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Interim Department Chair Dr. Xiaomei Ma, PhD, and Dean Megan L. Ranney announced Friday. Dr. Mayne's appointment marks her return to YSPH after eight highly successful years with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Mayne first joined YSPH in 1987 and spent nearly three decades as a faculty member at Yale, where she held an endowed chair as the C.-E. A. Winslow Professor of Epidemiology. Her work focused on food and nutrition as determinants of diet-related chronic disease, especially cancer. During her time at YSPH, Dr. Mayne served in several leadership roles including Chair of the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology and Associate Director for Population Sciences at the Yale Cancer Center.
In 2015, Dr. Mayne joined the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), one of the six FDA Centers. CFSAN is responsible for the safety and labeling of human foods covering approximately 80% of the U.S. food supply. CFSAN’s responsibilities also include fostering the development of healthier foods and ensuring that consumers have access to accurate and useful information to make healthy food choices. Under her leadership, the FDA advanced numerous public health policies such as sodium reduction, the elimination of industrially produced trans-fat from the food supply, mandating added sugars on Nutrition Facts labels, menu labeling, and implementing the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Dr. Mayne retired from the federal government in 2023.
In returning to her academic roots, Dr. Mayne said she looks forward to sharing her expertise as a public health leader and regulatory expert within the academic community, while also working to help advance scientific research on food and nutrition, especially where needed to support future regulatory, public health actions.