Rate My Professor Shelley McGuire

McGuire's research centers on maternal and infant nutrition, human milk composition, breastfeeding, the milk microbiome, mastitis, and women's health. She leads the McGuire/Williams laboratory, which investigates aspects of human and bovine milk and lactation, including compositional variations, microbiomes, and nutritional impacts on health. Key projects encompass an NIH grant on milk microbiomes and immune factors associated with mastitis in women and cows, studies on COVID-19 transmission through breastfeeding, genomic determinants of milk composition variation, and the influence of maternal diets including cow’s milk, soy beverages, and cannabis on human milk. In 2024, she received over $11 million from the NIH to launch a research center dedicated to women's nutrition and health. McGuire has co-authored influential textbooks, including Nutritional Sciences: From Fundamentals to Food and Prebiotics and Probiotics in Human Milk: Origins and Functions of Milk Microbiome and Prebiotic Components. She contributes editorially to The Journal of Nutrition as a Biographical and Historical Editor and served on the national committee updating U.S. Dietary Guidelines for alcohol consumption. Her scholarship has amassed over 13,500 citations, significantly shaping lactation and nutrition research. In 2025, she was awarded the Idaho Academy GEM Award for leadership in enhancing health outcomes for Idahoans, especially women.