Julie Mennella

Julie Mennella is a biopsychologist specializing in the development of food and flavor preferences in humans and the effects of alcohol and tobacco on women's health and infant development. She currently works at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, PA.

Some of her research has focused on how food preferences may be developed in the womb or during very early life.

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Awards and honors In 2016, she was named a distinguished practitioner fellow of the National Academy of Practice. In 2020, Mennella received the Max Mozell Award for outstanding achievement in the chemical sciences from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences.

In 2025, she was awarded Ig Nobel Prize for "studying what a nursing baby experiences when the baby’s mother eats garlic", by "Maternal Diet Alters the Sensory Qualities of Human Milk and the Nursling’s Behavior".