Sara Abiola

Sara Abiola serves as a professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. She began her academic career 15 years ago as an assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. One of the first graduates of the JD-PhD program at Harvard, she defended her PhD in health policy in 2011 and has focused her work on using law to improve population health, particularly for minorities and women. Abiola previously served as executive director of an academic center and worked in the tech industry at Amazon developing educational programs to expand access to tech careers. She is a member of the Obesity Society, with her dissertation work centered on childhood obesity. In her current role, she teaches over 200 students per semester, engages in AI-related curriculum development, and emphasizes holistic approaches integrating biology, behavior, and environmental factors to advance population health.