Engineering Research Visioning Alliance’s latest report outlines priority engineering directions needed to enable precision nutrition and improve public health
AUG. 6, 2026 – A new report from the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA), an initiative funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), outlines how engineering could play a central role in reshaping U.S. food systems to improve public health through precision nutrition. The approach tailors dietary recommendations to an individual’s biological, behavioral and environmental characteristics, reflecting growing recognition that people respond differently to the same foods.
Diet-related diseases remain one of the leading drivers of chronic illness in the United States, contributing to reduced life expectancy and more than $1 trillion annually in health care costs and lost productivity. Despite advancements in nutrition science, population-level dietary guidance has not consistently translated into improved health outcomes.
“Precision nutrition will not be realized through biology alone—it depends on engineering systems that can preserve, measure, and deliver nutrients with consistency and precision across the entire food lifecycle,” said Yael Vodovotz, Ohio State University professor and ERVA Thematic Task Force co-chair. “By advancing integrated approaches that connect food production, processing, and human health, this work helps define a future where food systems are designed to reliably support better individual health outcomes at scale.”
To address these challenges, ERVA brought together experts from engineering, nutrition science, agriculture, artificial intelligence (AI), materials science, public health, and industry to identify research directions needed to advance precision nutrition. The resulting report, Engineering Food Systems to Enable Precision Nutrition, provides a framework for national engineering research priorities necessary to translate biological insights into actionable engineering requirements, close measurement and modeling gaps, strengthen the resilience and sustainability of the U.S. food system, and advance public health.
Precision Nutrition: Nine Priority Research Areas
The report outlines nine priority research areas across three domains:
- Food as medicine approaches to disease prevention – Including advances at the intersection of agricultural innovation, biotechnology, materials science, and AI to enable foods that preserve nutrient potency and deliver bioactive compounds across biological barriers. These capabilities bring preventative, food-based systems closer to the level of pharmaceutical development, ultimately supporting disease risk reduction rather than contributing to chronic disease burden.
- Enabling technologies (tools, processes, and production systems) – Including smart packaging systems that monitor, preserve and verify nutrient integrity, and circular economy technologies that reclaim and regenerate nutrient resources from waste. Together, these innovations signal a shift from systems optimized primarily for industrial efficiency toward food processing and manufacturing systems designed to support biological precision, resilience, and long-term health.
- Nutrition insecurity and increasing access to local foods – Including use of robotics, automation, and sensors to help improve food cultivation and harvesting, as well as advanced storage and distribution technologies that maintain nutrient quality and shelf stability. These systems aim to expand access to nutrient-dense foods across diverse regional and economic contexts.
Across these research priorities, the report identifies three foundational engineering capabilities that serve as cross-cutting enablers of precision nutrition at scale. These themes span materials, devices, data, and systems integration and provide the connective infrastructure linking discovery, production and delivery into a coherent engineering agenda.
“As diet-related disease continues to rise and food systems face increasing complexity, engineering must play a central role in designing solutions that inform and enable safe and healthy food choices at scale,” said John Verboncoeur, senior associate dean for research at Michigan State University’s College of Engineering, ERVA Thematic Task Force co-chair, and co-chair of the IEEE Future Directions Smart Agri-food Systems Initiative. “Advancing precision nutrition will require integrating technologies across the agri-food system—from production and processing to data-driven decision-making throughout the supply chain and into the consumer pantry—supported by coordinated efforts across academia, industry, and government. This is a critical opportunity for the U.S. to lead in building a more resilient, intelligent, and health-focused food system.”
Engineering Food Systems to Enable Precision Nutrition is the 13th report released by ERVA, an initiative funded by the NSF to help identify future engineering research directions on a national level. The executive summary and full report can be downloaded from ERVA’s website here. Visit ERVA’s website to see other reports generated by visioning events: Engineering Research to Advance Quantum Technologies, Transforming Women’s Health Outcomes through Engineering, Strategic Engineering for Next-Generation Wireless Competitiveness, Engineering Opportunities to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance, AI Engineering | A Strategic Research Framework to Benefit Society, Engineering Materials for a Sustainable Future, Engineering the Future of Distributed Manufacturing, Engineered Systems for Water Security, Sustainable Transportation Networks Engineering, R&D Solutions for Unhackable Infrastructure, Leveraging Biology to Power Engineering Impact, and The Role of Engineering to Address Climate Change.
ERVA is funded by the National Science Foundation.
About the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA):
The Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) is a neutral convener that helps define future engineering research directions. Funded by the NSF Directorate for Engineering, ERVA is an engaged partnership that enables an array of voices to impact national research priorities. The initiative convenes, catalyzes and enables the engineering community to identify nascent opportunities and priorities for engineering-led innovative, high-impact, cross-domain research that addresses national, global and societal needs. Learn more at ERVAcommunity.org.
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