Rate My Professor Sarah Purcell

Dr. Sarah Purcell is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, with appointments in the School of Health and Exercise Sciences at UBC Okanagan, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, and the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. She also holds an associate membership in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. Dr. Purcell earned a BSc (Honours) in Nutrition and Dietetics and an MSc in Clinical Nutrition from Florida State University, followed by a PhD in Nutrition and Metabolism from the University of Alberta. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where her work focused on energy intake regulation among breast cancer survivors, and at the University of Alberta.

Her research centers on energy metabolism, dietary energy requirements, body composition, obesity, and women’s health, with the aim of leveraging energy balance concepts to develop evidence-based nutrition strategies for managing chronic diseases. This includes characterizing energy requirements in individuals with chronic conditions, examining the effects of weight loss, exercise, and ovarian sex hormones on appetite and energy balance, and translating findings into clinical practice using techniques such as doubly labeled water and body composition analysis. Dr. Purcell was appointed Assistant Professor at UBC effective January 1, 2022. In 2023, she was named a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Energy Metabolism in Chronic Disease. As of early 2022, she had authored 23 peer-reviewed publications and served as principal investigator on multiple grants and fellowships.