2024 National Conference

Lauren Link

Supplements & Sports Performance: An Update on the Science and Application

Lauren Link is a Registered Dietitian and Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics. She is the Assistant Athletics Director for Sports Nutrition at Purdue University, where she played women’s soccer and was part of the 2007 Big Ten Tournament championship team. As an undergrad, she completed a dual degree in Dietetics and Nutrition, Fitness and Health, and would later complete her master's from Purdue in Health and Kinesiology.

Lauren began her professional career as a clinical dietitian with St. Vincent's Hospital before returning to her alma mater in 2014 as the program’s first full-time sports dietitian. As the director of sports nutrition at Purdue she oversees all sports nutrition operations and staff, and works directly with football, men’s basketball, soccer and volleyball.

In addition to fueling her athletes for success on the field, she is also passionate about helping athletes successfully navigate the transition into the real world. She has led multiple initiatives to this end, founding the Purdue student-athlete community garden, spearheading a program called BLAST—for Boiler Life After Sport—designed to help address key components of athletes' transition to “normal human” status, and in 2017 published her first book on the subject: The Healthy Former Athlete. In March of 2024 she published her second book, Nutrient Timing: Fueling Strategies to Unlock Peak Performance