Dr. Zakaria Sabry, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley School of Public Health who was beloved by generations of students, died in Ottawa, Canada, on April 16, 2025, at the age of 92.

Sabry was a leading public health nutrition scientist whose work helped shape international nutrition policy and our understanding of diet and chronic disease prevention.

UC Berkeley School of Public Health Dean Michael C. Lu called Sabry, “a visionary leader who valued the translation of nutrition science knowledge into public health practice and policy, and the need for transdisciplinary research, long before the field of implementation science emerged.”

In multiple interviews with those whose lives he touched as a teacher and mentor, a common refrain was appreciation for the care, generosity, and guidance Sabry offered to students and colleagues throughout his teaching career. Sabry was “one of the most beloved teachers and mentors in our school’s history,” said Lu. “He was known for his deep compassion, unwavering support, and belief in the potential of every student.”

His support was especially valued by international students, whom Sabry helped navigate the American academic system. Sabry was Dr. May Wang’s doctoral advisor from 1990–1993. Wang is now a professor of community health sciences at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “I was an international student,” Wang said in an interview. “I think he knew that an international student doesn’t know how to navigate the academic world.”

“He was an incredible mentor,” she said. “There were so many other students he mentored. He knew exactly what people needed and provided that support.”

Wang and her fellow doctoral student Dr. Pat Crawford were so grateful for Sabry’s mentorship that on the occasion of his retirement from UC Berkeley in 2004, they worked together to launch the Zak Sabry Faculty Membership Award, which honors School of Public Health faculty members with a distinguished history of mentorship. This year, the award was given to two public health professors, Kim Harley and Joseph Lewnard.

“He really understood how students need strong mentors to really realize their potential,” said Crawford, who co-founded UC Berkeley’s Atkins Center for Weight and Health and spent 40 years as a UC Cooperative Extension nutrition specialist. “That’s what he was so good at – that’s where his leadership came in. He could see life through other people’s eyes. It wasn’t about him, it was about others.”

Born in Tanta, Egypt, in 1932, Sabry received a bachelor’s degree in food science from Ain Shams University in Cairo in 1952 before leaving for the United States to attend graduate school. He received a masters degree in food science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, followed by a PhD in biochemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1957, where he studied amino acid compositions across various food types as a way of determining food composition and food value.

Sabry’s days as an international graduate student influenced his later interest in mentoring. “When he moved from Cairo to UMass Amherst, he had a room in a house that was owned by the football coach, and the coach took him under his wing. He always had gratitude for that and tried to pay that forward,” said Sabry’s son James Sabry, a physician/scientist and biotechnology executive.

While at Penn State, Sabry met the woman who would become his first wife, Dr. Jean Henderson, who was originally from Canada.

After six years teaching at the American University of Beirut, where his children James and Charlie were born, Sabry took a position as professor at the University of Toronto.

From 1970 to 1974, Sabry led Nutrition Canada, the first comprehensive national nutrition survey in that country. This work took Sabry across the country, and up to the Yukon territories.

After a brief tenure as a professor at the University of Guelph, he then became the director of the Food Policy and Nutrition division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome from 1979 to 1983. Sabry joined the faculty at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 1984, and was a professor at the school until his retirement 20 years later.

Dr. Edward Penhoet, who served as dean of the School of Public Health from 1998–2002, remembers Sabry not only as a standout mentor to his students, but also as someone who helped Penhoet transition to a new role as dean.

“I was a very unconventional dean,” said Penhoet. “I was in the biotechnology business and I think a number of people at the school were skeptical of me as a dean, but Zak was very kind and went out of his way to make me feel at home and to help me understand the school and the people in it. In a way he was a mentor to me in my role as a dean.” Crawford said, “Zak’s mentorship was life changing for me. He saw my potential in nutrition policy leadership; and as a result of his mentorship, I left my epidemiologic research and co-founded the Center for Weight and Health, now known as the UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute, the nation’s first institute of its kind. We have provided research to inform federal and state nutrition policies serving millions of children and families. None of this would have happened without Zak’s critical and timely mentorship.”

Even after retirement, Sabry couldn’t stay away from teaching and took up a role as visiting professor in the School of Nutrition at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Sabry continued living in Toronto well into his 80s, where he continued to hone his teaching with his own grandchildren. “Sabry offered them seminars where they had to read things in advance and they would come to dinner at his apartment,” said Phil Cowan, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology whose wife, Carolyn Cowan, is cousin to Sabry’s second wife, Ruth Fremes.

Sabry is survived by his sons, James and Charlie, three stepchildren, three grandchildren, and nine step-grandchildren along with five siblings. He was predeceased by his parents and wives Jean Henderson and Ruth Fremes, one stepdaughter and one brother.

Memorial donations may be made to the Zak Sabry Mentorship Award at the University of California at Berkeley