Past Events and Research Seminars

Speaker:            Daniel Tomé, Honorarium Professor in Human Nutrition in Paris, France
Presentation:    “Overview of protein quality approaches”
Date:                  Monday 22 May 2023
YouTube:            https://youtu.be/xh0ekADM1CI

Synopsis:
The quality of proteins is a very sensitive factor in the quality of diets. Protein requirements relate to the supply of metabolically available amino acids to balance nitrogen and AA losses, and to support body protein synthesis and maintain the body's protein pool. Several health outcomes are associated with protein sufficiency, including growth, body weight, muscle mass and strength, bone health, defences, and most if not all physiological functions. Among the 20 constituent amino acids of proteins, 9 classified as essential (or indispensable) are a limiting factor in protein synthesis because they cannot be synthesized by the body and must be provided by food. Protein quality derives from the ability to simultaneously supply an adequate amount of nitrogen and the 9 indispensable amino acids. The reference profile is a composition of a protein which, when meeting protein requirements, simultaneously meets the requirements of each of the 9 indispensable amino acids. Protein quality derived from these reference profiles correlates with other approaches of protein quality including nitrogen retention, protein synthesis, and different physiological functions associated with protein sufficiency.

Biography:
Daniel TOMÉ is Honorarium Professor in Human Nutrition in Paris (France). He has held a long-standing position as researcher and professor at INRAE and AgroParisTech. His research interests are protein, amino acid and energy requirements and metabolism and the capacity of protein and amino acid supply to fulfil their biological functions and meet human nutritional needs. This research has contributed to understanding the role of amino acid and energy nutrients on metabolic pathways and control of feeding behaviour and provided different criteria and methods for the evaluation of protein and food quality. Over the past 25 years, he was involved in committees and working groups for national and international authorities that deliver scientific advice and recommendations for nutrient requirements and food quality, particularly related to protein and amino acids.

Speaker:              Dr Iain Spears, Senior Lecturer in Biomechanics, School of Biomedical, Nutritional, and Sport Sciences, Newcastle University
Presentation:    “Moving injury research away from the biomechanics laboratory and into the field with low-cost technology”
Date:                     Monday 15 May 2023

Synopsis:
Biomechanics has long been the main stay for understanding sports injuries in research, but is relatively underused in practice. High cost, lack of skills and large cohorts has restricted its widespread adoption. In this presentation, Iain will explore technologies currently in use and attempt to identify future trends in this growing area of research.

Biography:
Iain studied Mechanical Engineering at Newcastle University where his interest in tennis led him to undertake a dissertation on modelling the musculoskeletal biomechanics of tennis elbow. He subsequently completed a PhD in dental biomechanics at The University of Liverpool and a Post-Doc in orthopaedic biomechanics at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. After many years in biomechanics at Teesside University and then technical software development in professional football, he returned to Newcastle University to take up a role in sports biomechanics. He currently works with academics, elite athletes, military populations and commercial partners where his main area of expertise and activity is in the development of digital technology for injury prevention.

Speaker:              Dr Marc Sim, Senior Research Fellow, Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia.
Presentation:    “Nitrate and Health”
Date/Time:         Thursday 20^th April, 1200-1300hrs

Sysnopsis:
Despite the recognised benefits of diet for musculoskeletal health, the majority of work to date has focused on vitamin D, calcium and protein intake. Much remains unknown on the importance of other aspects of diet to support muscle function for fall and fracture prevention. This talk will explore the emerging evidence between diet and musculoskeletal function, structure, focusing on falls and fracture prevention. Specific topics will include:

• Which nutrients should older adults be incorporating into their diet?
• Dietary knowledge among the older adult population.
• Screening for nutritional deficiencies in older adults.
• Nutrition-based strategies to support muscle function and body composition.

Abstract: An ‘appetite’ for change: preventing falls & fractures in older populations
One in three individuals over 65 years will experience a fall annually. In Australia, falls are the leading cause of hospitalized injuries and injury deaths among older individuals. In this age group, 50% of falls result in fracture, incurring an average in-patient hospital stay of 10 days. Of importance, women also present with a much higher risk of falls and fractures compared to their male counterparts; warranting separate investigation. In addition to the trauma and injury associated with the fall and/or fracture itself, patients often have prolonged impaired mobility remaining functionally dependent upon others.

Exercise has emerged as one key factor in lowering fall and fracture risk, likely through its ability to improve muscle function and prevent chronic disease. But exercise is only one piece of the puzzle: nutrition is also significant. From a dietary perspective, attention has primarily been on the benefits of supplementing protein, vitamin D and calcium. However, the importance of other aspects of diet for musculoskeletal health to prevent falls and fracture remain largely unknown.

Recently however, diets rich in vegetable-derived nitrate have been linked to better muscle strength of the upper and lower-limbs, as well as physical function in adults across the lifespan. Notably, both green leafy and cruciferous vegetables are rich sources of vitamin K that is essential for the carboxylation of the bone-derived protein osteocalcin, which has been implicated in the material properties of bone. Our recent data also indicates dietary vitamin K1 may play an important role for fracture and falls prevention in older women. In summary, this talk will cover the importance of diet for musculoskeletal health, whilst also examining novel strategies to screen for nutritional deficiencies (e.g. muscle biomarkers, DXA whole-body imaging) to identify and manage individuals with high risk of falls and fractures.

Biography:
Marc is a Senior Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University (Perth, Western Australia) within the Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute. He obtained his PhD in Exercise Nutrition in 2015 from The University of Western Australia and has more than 95 career publications to date. Marc currently holds Fellowships from the Royal Perth Hospital Research Foundation and the Department of Health, Western Australia. His research evaluates and develops better evidence for identifying risk factors, muscle biomarkers and modifiable lifestyle factors, specifically through nutrition and exercise, to prevent falls and fractures to promote healthy ageing. His research is underpinned by his experience as a registered nutritionist and accredited exercise scientist. Marc is on the Research Committee for the Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) Bone and Mineral Society and the Council of the ANZ Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research.

Speaker:              Prof Jason Gill, School of Cardiovascular & Metabolic Health, University of Glasgow
Presentation:    “The importance of place: How where you live and where your (grand) parents came from affects your metabolic health?”
Date:                     Monday 20 March 2023

Synopsis:
Where we live and where our parents and grandparents came from can markedly affect our risk of developing cardiometabolic disease, and the effect of environmental factors and health behaviours on health outcomes.  This talk will explore the effects of socio-economic status and ethnicity on risk of cardiometabolic disease and how the influence of obesity and physical inactivity on health appears to differ according to ethnic background. Current diet and physical activity interventions for weight loss and to improve glycaemic outcomes are less effective in non-white ethnic groups.  The talk will explore how understanding the extent that ethnic differences in intervention effectiveness reflect differences in physiological response vs differences in engagement can help inform better interventions.  Finally, the talk will consider the drivers of type 2 diabetes in low and middle-income countries, how these are not necessarily the same as those in high-income countries, and the implications of this for interventions to prevent diabetes in these settings.

Biography:
Jason Gill is Professor of Cardiometabolic Health in the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He leads an active multi-disciplinary research group investigating the effects of lifestyle on the prevention and management of vascular and metabolic diseases. This work includes studies into the epidemiology of lifestyle and cardiometabolic disease risk, particularly why certain population groups appear to have increased susceptibility to the adverse effects of an ‘unhealthy’ lifestyle; lifestyle interventions for the prevention and management of cardiometabolic disease; and investigations into the mechanisms by which diet and exercise regulate insulin sensitivity and lipoprotein metabolism.  In recent years, he has become increasingly focused on collaborative projects involving biological and medical scientists working together with social scientists and external stakeholders to develop realistic and sustainable lifestyle interventions for the primary and secondary prevention of chronic diseases.  Jason has contributed to the UK Physical Activity guidelines, NICE guidelines for prevention of type 2 diabetes, and SIGN guidelines for obesity and cardiovascular disease.

He is chair of the Diabetes UK Research Strategy Group for Prevention and Management of Type 2 diabetes, and an editor at several journals including the British Journal of Sports Medicine.  In addition, he is Director of the MSc in Sport and Exercise Science & Medicine at the University of Glasgow and plays an active role in communicating science related to physical activity, diet and obesity to the widest possible audience including a number of appearances on TV documentaries.

Speaker:              Yashvee Dunneram, Postdoctoral Epidemiologist, Cancer Epidemiology Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford
Presentation:    “Diet, women’s reproductive health and risk of cancers”
Date:                     Monday 13 March 2023

Synopsis:
Menopause, defined as the complete cessation of menstrual periods, marks the end of the female reproductive life. With the ageing of the population, it is estimated that 1.2 billion women around the world will be menopausal by the year 2030. Menopausal transition could be an opportunity to encourage dietary changes. Diet of premenopausal women differs to that of postmenopausal women, reflecting improved adherence to dietary guidelines in the latter. However, a healthy diet during the premenopausal years is also recommended, as diet may potentially influence the timing of menopause as well as the presence of menopausal symptoms, in particular, vasomotor symptoms. For instance, women with an earlier menopause are at a higher risk of osteoporosis and cardiovascular diseases while women with a later onset of menopause are at a higher risk of breast, endometrial and ovarian cancers.

In recent years, vegetarian diets that do not contain meat, poultry and fish and vegan diets which excludes any animal foods including eggs and dairy products have gained popularity in Western countries. Previous studies including large numbers of vegetarians have shown a possible link between vegetarian diet and a lower risk of overall cancers. In studies like the EPIC-Oxford, the Adventist Health Study-2 and the UK Women’s Cohort Study, no association between vegetarian diet and risk of breast cancer has been reported while in the UK Biobank a lower risk of breast cancer was found among postmenopausal women.  Due to the small number of site-specific cancers in the studies with large number of vegetarians, the findings for the association between vegetarian diets and risk of individual cancer sites remain sparse and inconclusive. Therefore, the Health in Vegetarians Consortium, a collaborating project including 11 studies from around the world with large number of vegetarians and data on cancer were pooled to obtain higher statistical power to investigate the relationship between these diet groups and the risk of site-specific cancers.

This presentation will explore the association between diet and the markers of female reproductive health, in particular, age of natural menopause and vasomotor symptoms, as well as the risk of breast, endometrial and ovarian cancers. Furthermore, an introduction on the newly set up Health in Vegetarians Consortium will be covered.

Biography:
Yashvee Dunneram is a postdoctoral epidemiologist mainly working on the Health in Vegetarians Consortium at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. Her research interest extend to several aspects of public health nutrition, with a particular focus on the role of diet as a risk factor for non-communicable diseases.

Yashvee joined the Cancer Epidemiology Unit in 2020 after completing her PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology at the University of Leeds, where she used data from the UK Women’s Cohort Study and the International collaboration for a Life course Approach to reproductive health and Chronic disease Events (InterLACE) to look into the associations between diet and reproductive indicators of women’s health and reproductive health outcomes (e.g. breast, ovarian and endometrial cancers).

Speaker:              Dr Isabel Skypala PhD RD, Consultant Allergy Dietitian – Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals – part of Guys and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, London. Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer – Imperial College, London
Presentation:       “Food allergy, climate change and diet and lifestyle choices”
Date:                     Monday 6 March 2023
YouTube:              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B44il7R1Y54

Synopsis:
The talk will cover the increase in some types of food allergy linked to pollen due to  global warming and pollution. It will also explore lifestyle choices such as increasing veganism which has increased the plant based foods we eat, and also people choosing to remove milk and wheat from their diet for health reasons.

Biography:
Dr Isabel Skypala Is a consultant allergy dietitian and clinical lead for food allergy at the Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals in London and is also an honorary senior clinical lecturer at Imperial College. Dr Skypala gained her doctorate at Kings College London and has published over 70 peer reviewed papers and books. The focus of her research has been on plant food allergy, including pollen food allergy syndrome and lipid transfer protein allergy.

Speaker:         Dr Sophie Phillips, Post-doctoral research associate, PEDAL, University of Cambridge
Presentation:  “Measuring movement behaviour (physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep) of pre-school aged children”
Date:                Monday 20 February 2023

This seminar was held in person and not recorded.

Synopsis:
Movement behaviours (physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep) of pre-school aged children are independently associated with health and developmental outcomes. Recent evidence suggests that an integrated approach to viewing human movement behaviours, as opposed to viewing the behaviours in isolation, may be a stronger approach to improve the health of children and address current public health concerns. Globally, there has been a shift in guidance to movement behaviour guidelines (encompassing recommendations for physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep) for children in their early years. Despite this, limited evidence exists examining combinations of movement behaviours with health and developmental outcomes in young children, in part due to a lack of valid, reliable, and feasible methods available to measure these behaviours concurrently, particularly on a large scale.

This presentation will provide an overview of my PhD research, which involved assessing options for the measurement of movement behaviour of pre-school aged children at scale. I will present the rationale for this work, the methods used, and some of the key findings.

Biography:
Sophie is a post-doctoral research associate based in the Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) research centre in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. Prior to this, Sophie worked as a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Durham University, where she also completed her National Institute for Health Research School for Public Health Research (NIHR SPHR) funded PhD through Fuse, The Centre for Translational Research in Public Health. Sophie's PhD research involved assessing options for the measurement of movement behaviour (physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep) of pre-school aged children. Sophie has also worked on a range of wider multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional research projects focusing on improving child health. Sophie's core research interests centre on improving child health early in life, in particular through movement behaviour (physical activity (including different forms of play), sedentary behaviour and sleep).

Speaker:            Dr Michelle Harvie, Research Dietitian, Prevent Breast Cancer Research Unit, Manchester University
                          Hospital Foundation NHS Trust
Presentation:    “Intermittent fasting – fad diet or potential tool for preventing and managing disease?”
Date:                  Monday 6 February 2023

YouTube:           https://youtu.be/Mwz9-MpAwo4

Synopsis:
Intermittent fasting (5:2 diets, alternate day fasting, time restricted eating) are popular diets with internet claims they can limit ageing, and reduce risk of many conditions including dementia, cancer, diabetes. Research of these diets has increased over the past 20 years. This talk will summarise the history of intermittent fasting research, the current evidence based and the unanswered questions.

Biography:
Dr Michelle Harvie is a research dietitian at the Prevent Breast Cancer Unit, Manchester University Hospital Foundation NHS Trust has been a state registered dietitian since 1991 and a research dietitian since 2001. Her research involves developing and pioneering intermittent low calorie (5:2) diets. This has primarily focused on the prevention and management of breast cancer including cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. This work has evolved and extended to the management of Type-2 1 and gestational diabetes.

Dr Harvie has 75 peer review publications  and  has published 3 self-help guides for the public to follow intermittent diets; The 2-day diet (Ebury, Feb 2013); The 2-day diet cookbook (Ebury April 2013) and the quick and easy edition (Ebury, Feb 2014).

All author proceeds go to the Prevent Breast Cancer www.preventbreastcancer.org.uk  

Speaker:            Dr Susanna Mills, Public Health Specialty Registrar and NIHR Clinical Lecturer, PHSI, Newcastle University
Presentation:     “Weight management in adult secure mental health services”
Date:                  Monday 30 January 2023

Synopsis
Excess weight and associated morbidity and mortality are major challenges for patients with severe mental illness (SMI, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) and learning disability. Unhealthy weight is particularly prevalent in secure mental health care (patients who have committed a crime or pose a threat to themselves or others), where an estimated 80% of service users are affected. This burden contributes greatly to the 15-20 year discrepancy in life expectancy between patients with SMI and the wider population. Tackling excess weight in secure mental health care is therefore a national priority.

In this talk I will describe a mixed methods programme of research funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences. We aimed to explore weight management in the context of secure services delivered by two NHS mental health trusts in the North of England. We employed stakeholder engagement and used a staff survey, ethnographic ward observations, focus groups and interviews to collect data. Findings were integrated using a triangulation approach. In this presentation I will discuss the insights generated through this project, and reflect on the implications for potential future change.

Biography:
Dr Susanna Mills is a public health specialty registrar and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) clinical lecturer. She completed medical training at the University of Oxford, followed by the clinical foundation programme. Since 2011 she has been training to become a consultant in public health medicine, undertaking diverse placements in the North East including the UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England), local authorities and NHS settings. Dr Mills completed an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship in 2017, focusing on home food preparation, and has since held an NIHR clinical lectureship at Newcastle University. Her research addresses nutrition, obesity, mental health and wider health inequalities.

Speaker:              Dr Sarah Berry, Reader, Kings College London
Presentation:      “Personalised nutrition for metabolic health”
Date:                   Monday 21 November 2022
Video Link:         https://youtu.be/hjROK3kbsHo

Synopsis:
There is growing awareness of the need to move beyond the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach in nutritional advice. However, for personalised nutrition to become a reality, large-scale, high precision data integrating multiple dietary, lifestyle, physiological, genetic and metagenomic data is required.

This seminar will explore 1) why we need personalised approaches to nutrition advice, 2) the current status of personalised nutrition and remote clinical trials and 3) new developments with a focus on the ZOE PREDICT programme of research. The ZOE PREDICT programme is an ongoing programme of personalised nutrition (n>45,000) assessing the genetic, metagenomic, metabolomic and meal-context drivers of metabolic responses to predict individual responses to food using AI. This research is at the forefront of developments in personalised nutrition and is forging a new way forward in the design and implementation of large-scale remote nutrition research studies integrating novel technologies, citizen science and AI. The PREDICT programme has demonstrated the large and potentially modifiable variation in metabolic responses to identical meals in healthy people and the role that ‘what’ we eat, ‘who’ we are and ‘how’ we eat plays in shaping our responses.

Biography:
Sarah Berry is a Reader in Nutritional Sciences at King’s College London. Her research interests relate to the influence of dietary components on cardiometabolic disease risk, with particular focus on; personalised nutrition, postprandial lipid metabolism and food and fat structure. Since commencing her research career at King’s, she has been the academic leader for more than 30 human nutrition studies in cardio-metabolic health.

Sarah is also the Chief Scientist at ZOE Ltd and PI of the PREDICT programme of research, assessing the genetic, metabolic, metagenomic, and meal-dependent effects on metabolic responses to food in >40,000 individuals in the UK and US. This research is at the forefront of developments in personalised nutrition and is forging a new way forward in the design and implementation of large-scale remote nutrition research studies integrating novel technologies, citizen science and AI.

Speaker:           Prof Lorraine Brennan, School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin
Presentation:    “Metabolic Phenotyping for Precision Nutrition”
Date:                 Monday 14 November 2022

This seminar was not recorded.

Synopsis:
Diet-related diseases are the leading cause of death globally and strategies to tailor effective nutrition advice are required. Personalised nutrition advice is increasingly recognised as more effective than population-level advice to improve dietary intake and health outcomes. Metabotyping uses metabolic parameters to group individuals into subgroups with similar metabolic profiles and is a potential tool to deliver personalised nutrition advice. These homogeneous subgroups of individuals, named metabotypes, have been employed in human nutrition research to successfully identify differential responses to dietary challenges and interventions and diet-disease associations. The suitability of metabotyping to identify clinically relevant subgroups has emerged in  Diabetes research where metabolic profiling has identified subgroups of patients that display patterns of disease progression and complications. While the body of evidence supports the use of metabotyping for personalised nutrition there is a paucity of studies examining the efficacy of the approach to change dietary intake and health parameters. This talk will discuss the evidence supporting the use of metabotyping to tailor nutrition advice.

Biography:
Professor Brennan is a full professor and a PI in the UCD Institute of Food & Health and Conway institute. She leads a nutritional metabolomics group that are at the forefront of the application of metabolomics in nutrition research and the development of Personalized nutrition. Her group develop strategies for using metabolomics profiles to aid assessment of food intake and for delivering personalised nutrition.

She served as Director of the European Nutrigenomics Organization for 5 years and led a number of important initiatives such as the development of an Early Career Network and expansion of membership of the organization. Recently, she was appointed to the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine Standing Committee on Evidence Synthesis and Communications in Diet and Chronic Disease Relationships.

Speaker:           Prof Johannes von Lintig, Professor of Pharmacology, Director Visual Science Training Program, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA
Presentation:   “Molecular components affecting ocular carotenoid and retinoid homeostasis”
Date:                 Monday 7 November 2022
Video link:          https://youtu.be/cmYZn41tLnI 

Synopsis:
Carotenoids are a class of dietary lipids synthesized by plants, fungi, and bacteria. The colourful pigments affect a rich variety of physiological functions in nature and are beneficial for human health, serving as antioxidants in lipophilic environments and blue light filters in the macula of human retina. Some carotenoids also serve as precursors retinoids (vitamin A and its metabolites). Retinoids exert critical functions in mammalian biology as hormone-like signalling molecules and chromophore of visual pigments. To establish and sustain these processes, animals must acquire carotenoids from the diet, transport them, and metabolize them to biological active retinoids. In the past decades, much progress has been made in identifying the genes encoding proteins that mediate the transport and enzymatic transformations of carotenoids and their retinoid metabolites. Mutations in these genes impair carotenoid and retinoid metabolism and induce various pathologies, including blinding diseases. My seminar will summarize this advancement and will introduce involved proteins, including the homeostatic regulation of their activities. Major topics are the role of the membrane receptor STRA6 in ocular vitamin A uptake homeostasis as well as the role of the carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase BCO2 and the GRAM domain-containing proteins in ocular carotenoid homeostasis.

Biography:
I received my PhD degree from the biology department of the University of Freiburg (Germany) in 1993. As post-doctoral fellow, I approached the field of carotenoid research by studying the plant biosynthetic pathway of these pigments. In this project, we employed genetic engineering to increase the β-carotene content of rice to combat nutritional vitamin A deficiency, an effort that eventually succeeded in the establishment of ‘Golden Rice’. Through this experience, I became aware of how little was known about the biochemical and molecular basis of carotenoid metabolism in humans at that time. In 1998, I started my own group to bridge this knowledge gap and identified the first genes devoted to carotenoid metabolism in animals. In 2008, I moved my laboratory from Germany to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, U.S.A., and have been a member of the CWRU Medical School community since then. At CWRU, I have successfully continued and expanded my research program which has been continuously funded by the NIH. As a proud mentor to the next generation of scientists, I have nucleated and fostered the careers of my students and postdocs in industry and academia. Nationally and internationally, I help shape my research field as guest editor of special issues on carotenoids, cochair and chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Carotenoids, and as President of the International Carotenoid Society.

Speaker:              Dr Kieran Smith, Research Associate, Biomedical, Nutritional and Sports Sciences
Title:                     “Protein preloads and postprandial hyperglycaemia: a long whey to go for people with type 2 diabetes”
Date:                     Monday 31 October 2022
Video Link:         https://youtu.be/LZnj4DBj044

Synopsis:
The treatment of type 2 diabetes [T2D] is one of the defining medical challenges of the 21st century with latest statistics estimating that there are around 560 million people worldwide with T2D and a further 200 million individuals with “pre-diabetes”. T2D is characterised by insulin resistance and dysfunctions in insulin secretion, which results in hyperglycaemia. For most individuals with relatively controlled T2D, glycaemic excursions after eating are the predominant contributors to overall hyperglycaemia (i.e., HbA1c). However, beyond their role in determining HbA1c, postprandial glycaemic excursions are also independent cardiovascular risk factors. Thus, treatment strategies should be employed to focus not only on reducing HbA1c levels but also for controlling postprandial glycaemic excursions. In my talk, I will discuss recent advancements in the treatment of T2D, placing specific emphasis on the use of non-pharmaceutical approaches to regulate postprandial glycaemia. I will also present data collected from our group demonstrating how the supplementation of whey protein prior to meal times may represent an effective, yet simple, mode to reduce postprandial and overall hyperglycaemia for adults with T2D.

Biography:
Dr Kieran Smith is a post-doctoral research associate in the school of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences. Prior to starting his role as a PDRA, Kieran completed his PhD at Newcastle University under the supervision of Professor Emma Stevenson and Dr Daniel West, where he looked at novel nutritional strategies to improve glycaemic control in adults with obesity and type 2 diabetes. He has a keen interest in the application of dietary and lifestyle interventions for the management of metabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes, obesity, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. In particular, he is interested in the incretin peptides and understanding ways to harness their biological actions to improve metabolic health.

Speaker:              Jen Bradley, Research Assistant, PHSI, Newcastle University
Title:                     “The development and application of approaches to measuring diet across childhood and adolescence”
Date:                     Monday 20 June 2022
Video Link:        https://youtu.be/WOqdJPtlSB4

Synopsis:
Measuring diet accurately in infants, children and adolescents is challenging and the accuracy of self-reported dietary intakes has been questioned. This thesis combines findings from six published papers and aims to examine and address some of these challenges and highlight the importance of collecting self-reported dietary data across the different age groups. The thesis describes feasibility testing of a food diary method using graduated utensils to aid portion estimation in young infants (4-18 months) and its intended use in the UK Diet and Nutrition Survey of Infants and Young Children. A review paper explores the use of the 24 hour dietary recall assessment in children and the importance of collecting self-reported dietary data for guiding public health policies. The development and testing of Intake24, an online 24 hour dietary recall tool, will also be described, and its use in assessing intakes in national surveys. Two studies are included as examples of how Intake24 has been incorporated into new and existing food surveys, demonstrating how the inherent benefits of online tools have streamlined the data collection process, and increased the efficiency in the data management process prior to analysis compared to traditional paper-based methods. The findings from this thesis have identified specific techniques which can be incorporated into the methodology to improve the accuracy of the dietary data captured. These include recording the amounts of food served and leftover, and the use of food diaries as a memory aid for online recalls, particularly in children aged 8-12 years (‘transition period’) where there is variation in cognitive ability. It is important that existing tools remain accurate and fit-for-purpose, and also that, as technology evolves, new methods are developed which will improve our understanding of dietary intakes and behaviours in childhood and adolescence.

Biography:
Jen works as a Research Assistant at the Human Nutrition Research Centre at Newcastle University, UK. She has conducted dietary assessments in a range of populations, from young children up to older age adults, and has been involved in method development and validation. She has worked closely with schools, local healthcare departments, and other research institutes across a variety of projects. Jen was part of the initial Intake24 development team, working on the iterative development and testing of the tool, which involved specific user evaluation techniques. Jen has also led projects comparing Intake24 with traditional dietary assessment methods.

Jen is currently completing her PhD by published works, which focuses on the development, testing and implementation of dietary assessment methods in children. Her PhD includes the development of Intake24 and its application in two dietary surveys: the evaluation of the Change4Life Sugar Smart campaign and the Northumberland Middle Schools Study. The PhD also explores the challenges of self-reported dietary assessment, methods to improve the accuracy of reported intakes in children, and the importance of capturing these data for public health policy.

Speaker:              Prof Sarah R Baker, Editor-in-Chief, Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, Head, Unit of Oral Health, Dentistry and Society, School of Clinical Dentistry, University of Sheffield
Title:                     "Childhood tooth decay and obesity: a common risk factor, data linkage, conceptual modelling approach"
Date:                     Monday 13 June 2022
Video Link:         https://youtu.be/mDxjMKnzTqw

Synopsis:
The talk will present an overview of the common risk factor approach in oral health research, using an example of a recent study which examined the common determinants of obesity and tooth decay using two linked datasets (Born in Bradford and Regional Hospital General Anaesthesia data) in a multi-ethnic cohort. The challenges of addressing Wicked Problems in public health will be discussed, together with the need for systems thinking and methods as one approach to help tackle such problems.

Session aim: The aims of the session are two-fold to; (1) outline with an example the common risk factor approach to understanding the determinants of childhood obesity and tooth decay and (2) explore the application of systems thinking and methods to Wicked Problems in Public Health.

Learning objectives:

1. Outline the Common Risk Factor Approach which addresses risk factors common to many chronic conditions within the wider socio-environmental context
2. Provide an example of a recent study which examined the common determinants of obesity and tooth decay using two linked datasets in a multi-ethnic cohort
3. Discuss the challenges of addressing the Wicked Problems faced in Public Health
4. Outline how systems science and methods may provide one approach to tackling such problems

Biography:
Sarah Baker is a Professor of Psychology as applied to Dentistry at the School of Clinical Dentistry, University of Sheffield and Chartered Health Psychologist registered with the British Psychological Society.

She is Editor-in-Chief of the international flagship journal Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, the first social scientist to become Editor-in-Chief of a Dentistry, Oral Surgery and Medicine journal. She has received many awards for her contributions to social and behavioural sciences in dentistry including the prestigious 2018 International Association of Dental Research, Distinguished Scientist Award for Behavioural, Epidemiological and Health Services Research. She has an Honorary Professorship at University College London and holds an Honorary post in the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (formerly Public Health England).

She collaborates with dental researchers across the world applying social and behavioural sciences to a wide range of areas in the oral and dental field. These areas include dental public health, orthodontics and orthognathics, periodontal disease, children’s oral health, dental anxiety, dry mouth, dentine hypersensitivity, gerodontology, trigeminal neuralgia, dental caries, implementation science, and the application of systems science and participatory approaches. Her primary research interest, however, is in the psychological, social and behavioural factors which influence how individual’s experience oral health conditions and dental treatment.

Speaker:              Dr J. Bernadette Moore, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Obesity, Head of Graduate School, Faculty of Environment, University of Leeds, School of Food Science & Nutrition
Title:                     “From NAFLD to MAFLD: New Directions in Fatty Liver Disease Research”
Date:                     Monday 6 June 2022
Video Link:         This seminar was held in person and was not recorded.

Synopsis:
This seminar will introduce and give an overview of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is now the most common of liver disease affecting an estimated 25-30% of adults and 10% of children in the UK and worldwide. In the context of dissecting the roles of genetics, obesity and dietary patterns in the development and progression of NAFLD, the rationale for both a name change to ‘metabolic associated fatty liver disease; MAFLD’, and a move to positive diagnostic criteria will be explained. Novel molecular mechanisms underpinning the beneficial effects of diet and exercise in NAFLD treatment will be highlighted. Specifically, separate new data suggesting roles for intrahepatic mucosal associated invariant T (MAIT) cells and vitamin D regulated miRNAs in NAFLD pathogenesis will be discussed.

Biography:
Dr J Bernadette Moore, Associate Professor of Obesity, University of Leeds. Dr Moore earned her Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Florida and subsequently earned the prestigious Christine Mirzayan Science Policy fellowship to the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC where her interests in science policy and childhood obesity were fostered. Prior to her recruitment to the University of Leeds in 2016, Dr Moore was Senior Lecturer in Molecular Nutrition at the University of Surrey, where she had started her first laboratory in 2007. She is currently the Head of the Graduate School for the Faculty of Environment, which encompasses ~575 postgraduate researchers. Research in Dr Moore’s laboratory for the last ten years has been largely focused on the role of hepatic nutrient metabolism in healthy ageing, obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). To date, she has raised over 2.9 million pounds in research funding and been supported by the: BBSRC, EPSRC, Children’s Liver Disease Foundation, and the Universities of Surrey and Leeds. Her research employs a variety of genomic, proteomic, and systems biology tools alongside nutritional intervention studies. Current active strands include clinical and public health nutrition aspects related to dietary assessment and the prevention and management of NAFLD and obesity in children and adults. She has published >50 peer-reviewed papers, editorials and book chapters. Dr Moore was the recipient of the 2018 Nutrition Society Silver Medal for Research Excellence in a Young Investigator, and her work on the high sugar content of yogurts received significant international media interest, notably in the top 1% of ~20 million Altmetric tracked publications.

Speaker:              Adele Hug, Specialist Oncology Dietitian, Hug Nutrition & Oncology Committee Member for EFAD Oncology Group

Title:                     "Working as an Oncology Dietitian: Translating the evidence to deliver nutrition management for people living with cancer"

Date:                     Monday 16 May 2022

Video Link:         https://youtu.be/dv5esvvq3Fk

Synopsis:
A deep dive into nutrition across the cancer pathway, from primary & secondary prevention to nutrition support during treatment. I'll talk about what we know (& what we don't!) about nutrition & living well with cancer with specific tumour types where we have more evidence, and where the gaps are that need to be filled. There will be lots of time for Q&A so please bring with you any questions you may have

Biography:
Adele is a Specialist Oncology Dietitian with a broad experience working in digital health, hospital, community, private & charity sectors. Skilled in all areas of clinical operational needs and oncology dietetics and she is currently settling back home in Perth, Western Australia. With so many myths around cancer and nutrition, she is passionate about supporting people and their loved ones before, during and after cancer with up-to-date evidenced based nutrition advice that is relevant to them.

Speaker:              Dr David Hughes, Lecturer/Assistant Professor (Ad Astra Fellow), School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science, University College
                              Dublin
Title:                     “Can Selenium prevent Cancer? May depend on where, not just whom, you ask”
Date:                     Monday 9 May 2022
Video Link:            https://youtu.be/b8Vaj4Xbda8

Synopsis:
The micronutrient selenium (Se) may help prevent cancer development at several organ sites. Furthermore, genetic variations in selenoprotein genes may impact the role of several encoded Se-incorporated proteins in countering oxidative and inflammatory processes implicated in carcinogenesis. We previously reported in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort that a higher Se status (as assessed by prediagnostic circulating levels of Se and its major transport protein, Selenoprotein P; SELENOP) was associated with lower risks of colorectal cancer (Hughes et al. 2015; PMID: 25042282) and hepatocellular cancer (Hughes et al. 2016; PMID: 27357089). We then showed that several common SNPs in selenoprotein and Se metabolic pathway genes may affect colorectal cancer development (Fedirko et al. 2019; PMID: 31027226). We have recently concluded similar, large, nested case-control studies within EPIC of Se status, assessed by prediagnostic plasma measures of Se, SELENOP, and Glutathione peroxidase 3 (GPX3), SNP variants, and risks of breast cancer and gastric cancer. Higher Se levels (but not SELENOP or GPX3) were associated with a lower gastric cancer risk. There were no significant association of Se status with breast cancer risk, and while several SNPs were associated with disease risk, none retained significance after multiple testing adjustment. These findings highlight a possible important role for Se and selenoproteins in the prevention of gastrointestinal cancers, but not for hormonal-related cancers (as we also previously observed no association with prostate cancer risk; Outzen et al, 2021; PMID: 32838475). The results align with the hypothesis of a Se status in many European subjects that is insufficient for robust Se-mediated cancer prevention. However, they require replication in other settings, specifically in areas of suboptimal Se availability.

Biography:
I am a fellow of the Conway Institute and co-director of the Cancer Biology & Therapeutics lab (CBT; http://www.cbtlab.ie/), University College Dublin, UCD, Dublin, Ireland. I also teach and coordinate undergraduate and post-graduate modules in science and medicine at UCD. My current molecular epidemiology research examines how nutritional, genetic, metabolic, microbial and lifestyle factors may affect the initiation and progression of cancer, with a focus on colorectal cancer. Current projects are funded by the Health Research Board (HRB) of Ireland, UCD Ad Astra Fellowship, and the International HundredK+ Cohort Consortium (IHCC). I am a Governing Council Member, of the Irish Cancer Epidemiology Network), and the International Society for Selenium Research, and a Working Group Member of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study. I obtained a BSc (hons) in Biochemistry at the University of Leeds, England, a PhD in Medical Genetics at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a Postgraduate diploma in Health Professions Education at the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Science, Dublin, Ireland. I have previously worked at Imperial College London, The Sanger Institute, Cambridge, WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (Lyon, France), Trinity College Dublin and the RCSI.

Speaker:              Emeritus Professor Chris Seal, Newcastle University, PHSI
Title:                     "Effect of Organic and Conventional Mediterranean Diets on pesticide exposure and excretion"
Date:                     Monday 25 April 2022
Video Link:         The recording of this seminar is not available.

Synopsis:
Observational studies have linked pesticide exposure with ill health whereas organic food consumption has been associated with positive health outcomes. Organic farming standards prohibit the use of most pesticides and organic food consumption may therefore reduce pesticide exposure.

We wanted to see whether diet profile (Western versus Mediterranean) and production type (conventional versus organic) affected urinary pesticide residue excretion (UPRE), which specific diet components influenced UPRE.

We carried out a two-week, randomized, complete food replacement dietary intervention trial with healthy adults taking part in a residential field course in Crete.  Participants were randomly allocated to an intervention (n=13) or conventional (n=14) group.  For two weeks participants in the intervention group consumed a Mediterranean Diet (MedDiet) made entirely from organic foods, the conventional group consumed the same MedDiet but made entirely from conventional foods. Both groups consumed habitual Western diets made from conventional foods before and after the intervention period. The primary outcome was UPRE.  In addition, we assessed diet composition and pesticide residue profiles in foods eaten.

Participants were aware of group assignment, but the study assessors were not.

During the intervention period, total UPRE was 91% lower with organic (mean 17 µg/day, 95% CI 15,19) than with conventional (mean 180 µg/day, 95% CI 153,208) food consumption (p<0.0001). In the conventional group, switching from the habitual Western diet to the MedDiet increased insecticide excretion from 7 to 25 µg/day (p<0.0001), organophosphate excretion from 5 to 19 µg/day (p<0.0001) and pyrethroid residue excretion from 2.0 to 4.5 µg/day (p<0.0001).

Changing from habitual Western to a MedDiet with higher fruits, vegetables and whole grain consumption was associated with increased insecticide, organophosphate and pyrethroid exposure.  In contrast organic food consumption reduced exposure to all groups of synthetic chemical pesticides. This may explain the positive health outcomes linked to organic food consumption in observational studies but requires further verification.

SPEAKERS:
Laura Haigh, Lead Specialist Dietitian & Clinical Fellow NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre
Colette Kirk, Senior Dietitian & PhD Fellow, NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre
David Bourne, Specialist Dietitian, Freeman Hospital.

DATE:                 Monday 7 March 2022
VIDEO LINK:      https://youtu.be/e4DFLGrrspc

TITLES OF TALKS:
Laura Haigh “Personalised Nutrition in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)”
Colette Kirk “Factors that impact on the quality of life of intestinal failure patients treated with home parenteral nutrition”
David Bourne “Chronic Pancreatitis: Towards a Comprehensive, Patient-Centred, Evidence-Based Model of Nutritional Care”

SYNOPSIS:
Laura Haigh: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a metabolic liver disease that poses a considerable challenge for 21st century healthcare. Lifestyle interventions targeting weight loss and improved dietary patterns are the recommended treatment. However, the effectiveness of current established diet therapies is suboptimal. The patatin‐like phospholipase domain containing 3 (PNPLA3) gene modifies disease outcome and hepatic lipid handling, but the role of PNPLA3 variants in modulating responsiveness to different diet therapies is unknown.  The seminar will share details of my project, which aims to assess the feasibility of conducting a genotype-driven randomised controlled trial (RCT) investigating the differential response to a Mediterranean diet intervention of NAFLD patients according to genotype for the rs738409 (I148M) variant of PNPLA3.

Colette Kirk: In England, there are over 2500 intestinal failure patients being treated with home parenteral nutrition and numbers are rising by 20% each year. The treatment of parenteral nutrition itself is time-consuming, invasive and radically changes lives. Patients struggle with ongoing symptoms of their underlying condition, live with multiple health problems, and are required to manage a range of drug and lifestyle management regimes. This inevitably has severe consequences for their quality of life. Understanding how intestinal failure, parenteral nutrition, and the associated co-morbidities affect the quality of life of patients is an essential first step towards a patient-led, clinical service that supports patients to live their longest and best life.

David Bourne: Chronic pancreatitis is a complex digestive disease that results in people being unable to digest their food properly, this can cause weight loss, poor nutrition and low levels of vitamins and minerals that can have a catastrophic impact on the quality of life of people living with the disease.  The seminar will share details of David’s project aiming to investigate nutrition in chronic pancreatitis and how he aims to develop an evidence based nutritional intervention.

BIOGRAPHIES:
Laura Haigh: Laura is an Early Career Researcher and NIHR Newcastle BRC Clinical Fellow in the Faculty of Medical Sciences. An Allied Healthcare Professional by training, she is Lead Specialist Dietitian in the internationally recognised Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) Clinical Service and member of the Liver Research Group, where she contributes to the translational research programme and delivers evidence-based diet treatments. Since qualifying as a registered dietitian, she has over 10 years’ experience traversing public health and clinical spheres, with a particular interest in individuals affected by lifestyle-related disease.  Her current project is focused on personalised nutrition and the feasibility of nutrigenomic therapeutic approaches for patients with NAFLD. https://www.newcastlebrc.nihr.ac.uk/staff/laura-haigh/  

Colette Kirk: I graduated in 2009 with a BSc (HONS) in Biomedical Science. I became fascinated by the impact of nutrition on health and well-being, and in 2010 went back to university to study post-graduate dietetics. Between 2013 and 2020 I worked full time as a clinical dietitian, specialising in liver disease, intestinal failure and home parenteral nutrition. During this time, I secured a number of grants which I used for training in research methods; equipment to improve patient care; for conferences to disseminate findings; and to engage in patient and public involvement. I was funded through Research Capability Funding for six months to develop my research ideas, and in 2020 secured one year’s pump prime funding through Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre to register for a clinically focussed PhD. In 2021 I went on to secure a NIHR Integrated Clinical Academic Doctoral Research Fellowship. Through this award I hope to understand how the nutritional treatment for intestinal failure (parenteral nutrition) contributes to the development of various co-morbidities such as liver disease and sarcopenia, and the impact this has on the quality of life of patients.

David Bourne: David is currently a Specialist Dietitian working with patients with pancreatic disease at the Freeman Hospital. He has published research in pancreatic cancer, acute pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis. David will commence an NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship in June that will focus on nutrition in chronic pancreatitis.

Speaker               Prof Hamish McAllister-Williams, Professor of Affective Disorders, Translational and Clinical Research, Newcastle University

Title:                     “Living healthier lives and depression: A Psychiatrist’s perspective”

Date:                     Monday 14 February 2022

Video Link:        https://youtu.be/_X3UQ2Ax2Jk

Synopsis:
Depression is one of the, if not the, leading causes of burden of disability of all health care problems in the developed world.  It is associated with a staggering degree of morbidity and mortality.  Costs to society are enormous.  It is hypothesised that these are driven in particular by the vast numbers of people with milder depression and the smaller number of individuals with severe and difficult to treat depression.  Healthier living, including diet, exercise and exposure to green spaces, may play a role in generally improving the mental health of the population and reducing rates of depression.  In addition, such strategies may also play a role in the management of more severe depression.

Biography:
Hamish McAllister-Williams is Professor of Affective Disorders at Newcastle University and an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in the Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear (CNTW) NHS Foundation Trust.

In addition to a medical degree, Prof McAllister-Williams holds a PhD in Neuropharmacology from the University of Edinburgh, and an MD in Clinical Psychopharmacology from Newcastle University.  He leads the Northern Centre for Mood Disorders research group (www.mood-disorders.co.uk ).  His main research interests are in further understanding mood disorders and their treatment.  He is Chief or Principle Investigator on a number of multicentre pharmacological and neurostimulatory trials.  Clinically, he leads the Regional Affective Disorders Service in Newcastle, a tertiary level specialised clinic for patients with complex or difficult to treat mood disorders. The service provides a range of new and innovative treatments.  He led an international expert group to produce a consensus statement on the identification, assessment and management of “difficult-to-treat depression”.

Speaker:           Dr Laura Basterfield, Research Associate, PHSI, Newcastle University

Title:                “Physical fitness, BMI and health-related quality of life in children: impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns”

Date:                Monday 31 January 2022

Video Link:      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USBVS2gjVZ4

Synopsis:
We don’t know much about the physical fitness of children in the UK as it’s not routinely measured, however physical fitness is an important health predictor in its own right. This talk will discuss the results of my work in the North East into the associations that children’s physical fitness has with their mental wellbeing and BMI, and the changes that occurred due to the Covid-19 lockdowns. Further recent follow-up data will also be discussed.

Biography:
Laura is a Research Associate in the Population Health Sciences Institute with a background in measuring physical activity and body composition in children. Her current work focusses on the associations between physical fitness, BMI and mental wellbeing in children, to find ways that all three can be improved to benefit children’s health.

Speaker:              Professor John Blundell, Appetite Control and Energy Balance Research Group (ACEB), School of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Leeds

Title:                     “The Drive to Eat in homo sapiens and implications for obesity”

Date:                     Monday 17 January 2022

Video Link:        A recording of this seminar is not available for viewing.  Please view the PDF of the presentation at: JohnBlundell_Seminar.

Synopsis:
Thought #1.There is currently a body of scientific comments arguing that biology should generate ideas as well as data (eg Nurse, 2021). Thought #2. In the field of obesity, over the last half century a mountain of data has been piling up at the same time as the prevalence of obesity has been increasing across the planet.

In this presentation a new evidence-based formulation is proposed for understanding human appetite in which the drive to eat is quite separate from the inhibition of eating (satiety) and which does not require homeostatic regulation of food intake.  The drive to eat is a component of appetite control, independent of the omnivorous habit of humans, and separate from food choice, satiety and food reward. The drive forms part of the tonic component of appetite and arises from biological needs; it is distinct from episodic aspects of appetite which are heavily influenced by culture and the environment  (and which reflect the omnivorous habit) and from satiety which is a response to food consumed. It is proposed that the tonic drive to eat reflects a need state generated by metabolic energy expenditure required to maintain the functioning and integrity of vital organs. Specifically the tonic drive is quantitatively associated with FFM (fat-free mass) and RMR (resting metabolic rate). A rational proposition is that high metabolic rate organs (such as heart, liver, kidney, brain) together with skeletal muscle generate a metabolic need which drives energy intake. The basic phenomenon of a relationship between FFM, RMR and EI (energy intake), first published in 2011, has been substantially replicated and there are at least 12 concordant published studies carried out in 7 different countries (and 3 continents) with various ethnic groups of lean and obese humans. These relationships exist in humans of all ages from newborn infants up to elderly adults. These studies demonstrate that FFM and RMR represent major determinants of the drive to eat, and this is makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.  This account of appetite control, developed within an energy balance framework, provides a coherent explanation for the apparent inexorable escalation of fatness in individual humans, and for the progressive increase in the prevalence of obesity which, among other factors, reflects the difficulty of managing the biological drive to eat.

Biography:
JB has a BSc in Psychology and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of London (Institute of Neurology). He holds the Chair of PsychoBiology in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds.

JB’s initial research concerned the relationship among brain mechanisms, foods and appetite control, and led to the development of the Satiety Cascade. Currently the research is focussed upon the study of human appetite within an energy balance framework and has demonstrated that Energy Expenditure is a strong determinant of the Drive to Eat. Other research has included genetic studies on anorexia nervosa, the impact of physical activity on appetite, and mechanisms of action of anti-obesity drugs. The Leeds research team has developed several instruments for the evaluation of human appetite in the laboratory and the real world.

JB was a member of the UK government DSI Foresight Expert Group that developed the concept of the Obesities Systems Map as the basis for the Change for Life Programme; he was also a member of the DoH Expert Group on Social Marketing approach to childhood obesity. JB has been an expert consultant for ILSI and EFSA, and has served on a number of Scientific Obesity Advisory Boards.

JB has received numerous prizes including the Johananoff International Fellowship, Sir David Cuthbertson Prize, Gino Bergami Prize, International Prize in Modern Nutrition, and the British Nutrition Foundation Prize. He has been visiting professor at the University of Ghent and Distinguished International Visiting Scholar at the University of Rhode Island. JB has been a long standing scientific governor of the BNF, was a founding member of the European Association for the Study of Obesity, and in 2019 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from UK ASO.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&user=9BJ5YYgAAAAJ

Speaker:           Dr Rachel Turnbull, Programme Manager, Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria

Title:                   “Healthy Happy Places – The built environment and mental health and wellbeing”

Date:                   Monday 13 December 2021

Video Link:         https://youtu.be/UKj5geVSYrI

Synopsis:
The design of buildings and the shaping of public spaces in the places we live, work and play contribute to our lived experiences, how we feel, and have the power to promote or stifle wellbeing and recovery. The Healthy Happy Places programme aims to harness knowledge and expertise in mental health, architecture and urban planning to explore why the built environment matters when thinking about mental health and wellbeing.

The programme is being funded by the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria (AHSN NENC) and is being delivered as a partnership initiative on behalf of the Integrated Care System for the North East and North Cumbria to develop a multi-sector approach for supporting and creating mental health and wellbeing through the built environment.

The seminar will share details on the Healthy Happy Places programme - exploring the impact of the built environment on health and wellbeing; the systems involved in creating and sustaining health and wellbeing; and sharing a concept for developing an innovation hub focussed around mobilising collective action in the North East and North Cumbria to tackle health inequalities through built environment interventions.

Team Biographies
Timothy Crawshaw MA MRTPI FRSA is the Vice President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, working as an International Planning and Development Consultant in the areas of urban design, planning, green infrastructure, energy efficiency and sustainable transport. With experience in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East, alongside an expanding UK practice, he has a specific interest in the role of the nature-based approaches to addressing the climate emergency, alongside improving health and wellbeing outcomes and tackling inequality.

Timothy is an experienced lecturer, trainer and facilitator with a passion for community development, and he continues to champion the role of planning as a key part of the solution to the challenges of our times. Timothy is currently the Chair of the Tees Valley Nature Partnership.

Dr Rachel Turnbull is a Programme Manager who works in healthcare innovation leading regional projects in the North-East of England. Originally qualified as a clinician with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, Rachel has developed more than 12 years’ experience in project management and service improvement roles across the North-East and has recently completed a further degree in urban planning and architecture. Her interests lie in the connections between wellbeing and urban design and how to support the creation of healthy, happy, fun places where people and communities can thrive.

Holly Fillingham has a research background obtained in Sociology and Criminology, qualified to master’s level, as well as having recently gained a specialist qualification in quantitative and qualitative methods and statistics from the University of Amsterdam. Holly is also pursuing a PhD in social prescribing and is undergoing further education via The Open University. Holly has experience working in primary care, third sector mental health, and is passionate about delivering excellent research projects and implementing their outcomes into the real world.

Speaker:            Dr Pauline Scheelbeek, Assistant Professor in Nutritional & Environmental Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Title:                  “Predominantly Plant Based Diets: the silver bullet for healthy, sustainable and resilient food systems?”

Date:                 Monday 6 December 2021,

Video Link:       https://youtu.be/xTzGzt2WTWE

Synopsis:
Rapid and transformational changes in food systems in the Global North are critical to improve population health and deliver on climate change mitigation targets. Stimulating the consumption of healthy and sustainable diets presents a major opportunity for reducing the environmental footprint of food systems and improving health outcomes.  “Healthy and sustainable diets” are variously defined in the literature, but are typically predominantly plant-based diets (PPBDs) comprising large amounts of plant-based foods and limited amounts of animal-sourced foods, such as processed meat and dairy. Despite strong evidence on significant health and environmental benefits of modelled/theoretical shifts from current to PPBDs a very small proportion of populations in the Global North adhere to such diets. In this talk I will share figures on and trends towards predominantly plant-based diets in the Global North. I will discuss the  health, sustainability and resilience aspects of predominantly plant-based diets and will discuss the expected and unexpected trade-offs associated with population-wide dietary change towards such diets. I will cover the mechanisms that underlie behaviour change, but also address the major evidence gaps. I will end with discussing my view on the urgent steps forward in the next years to come.

Biography:
Pauline Scheelbeek is an Assistant Professor in nutritional and environmental epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is also the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Climate Change, Health and Sustainable Development. Pauline’s research focusses on finding health, sustainable, resilient and realistic solutions that will accelerate transformational food system change, especially in the Global North. Currently she leads the multi-country Sustainable and Health Food Systems (SHEFS) project as well as the Food system Adaptations in Changing Environments in Africa (FACE-Africa) project in the Gambia. In this context she models future food systems for the UK, South Africa, India and The Gambia under several climate change, environmental, health and behaviour change scenarios. Pauline is an active STEM ambassador and frequently organises public engagement activities for school aged children in the UK and sub-Saharan Africa around environment, nutrition and health issues.

Speaker:              Dr Bina Ram, Research Associate, School of Public Health, Child Health Unit, Imperial College London

Title:                     “Evaluation of The Daily Mile: Developing a Core Outcome Set for physical activity interventions in primary schools & the iMprOVE cohort study”

Date:                     Monday 22 November 2021

Video Link:         https://youtu.be/-KVvjQTHYKY

Synopsis
Health promotion in schools is widely encouraged by UK Governments. Many physical activity interventions have been adopted by schools to help children increase their physical activity and potentially improve mental health. However, synthesising results from previous studies that have examined physical activity interventions in schools is challenging due to the variation in outcomes measured. This prevents identifying which interventions may be the most beneficial.

The UK’s National Obesity Plan specifically named The Daily Mile, a popular school-based physical activity intervention, as an easy and accessible way to increase children’s physical activity. Anecdotally, it is said that The Daily Mile makes children “fitter, happier, and healthier, and improves their focus in class”. To date, there is a small evidence base of short-term studies that show The Daily Mile to increase children’s physical activity, but limited or inconsistent evidence of benefits to mental health or educational performance.

As part of The Daily Mile evaluation, I am presenting two work packages. The first, is the development of a Core Outcome Set (COS) for physical activity interventions in primary schools. This is the first COS, to our knowledge, aimed specifically at primary school children. Wide-use of our COS in future studies will enable results to be synthesised across studies. The second work package is the iMprOVE cohort study. iMprOVE is a longitudinal quasi-experimental study examining the impact of The Daily Mile on children’s physical activity, mental wellbeing and educational performance throughout primary school, in Greater London.

Biography
Bina Ram is a Research Associate in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. Her background is in Psychology and Epidemiology. She has twenty years of experience working primarily on longitudinal cohort studies contributing to research focussing on children’s development, health and wellbeing. She has previously contributed to the National Evaluation of Sure Start, a UK Labour government funded area-based initiative that aimed to integrate health services in deprived areas of the UK to provide young children the best start in life. The results of this evaluation influenced the ‘Every Child Matters’ and ‘Ten Year Childcare Strategy’ policies.

Speaker:              Dr Reina Engle-Stone, Assistant Professor, Department of Nutrition, University of California, Davis, USA.

Title:                    "Streamlining analysis and modeling of dietary intake data collected through 24-hour recall: new tools and their application to micronutrient intervention programs". 

Date:                    Monday 8 November 2021.

Video Link:           https://youtu.be/yeMkN5g6y_4

Synopsis:
High quality information on usual (habitual) dietary intake is necessary for understanding diet-health relationships and planning and managing nutrition intervention programs. This presentation will summarize recently-developed methods and tools for analysis of short-term dietary data (such as 24-hour recalls or diet records) for estimating usual intake distributions and modeling the potential impacts of nutrition intervention programs. The presentation will illustrate how these new methods and tools have been applied to address policy-relevant research questions related to micronutrient intervention programs.

Biography:
Dr Engle-Stone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Institute for Global Nutrition at the University of California, Davis. She holds a PhD in Nutritional Biology with emphasis in International and Community Nutrition from the same institution. Her research is in the area of global public health nutrition, with a focus on micronutrient nutrition among women and young children in low-resource contexts. Research themes include micronutrient nutrition and related interventions such as food fortification, dietary analysis and modeling, and cost-effectiveness of nutrition programs.

Speaker: Dr Duika Burges Watson, PHSI, Newcastle University

Title: “Altered smell and taste: Anosmia, parosmia and the impact of long Covid-19”

Date: Monday 1 November 2021

Video Link: https://youtu.be/o3lvW5QbP3w

Synopsis:

On conservative estimates[1], 7 million people worldwide are living with COVID-19 related parosmia (distorted sense of smell) and ~40% to 75% of all COVID-19 infections results in anosmia (loss of sense of smell) that for 10% does not resolve quickly. Changes to smell mean that people can lose the ability to find joy and satisfaction in food. Some people lose appetite, are unable to eat and lose weight. Unexpectedly others gain weight as they eat more to try to recapture lost food satisfaction. For those with parosmia, eating at all can be a challenge. In this interactive session I will summarise our recently published work[2] on the impact of altered smell and taste, demonstrate the sensory dimensions of altered taste and smell and open discussion on the importance of this knowledge to nutrition and dietetic teaching and practice.

[1] Ohla et al, Increasing incidence of parosmia and phantosmia in patients recovering from COVID-19 smell loss medRxiv 2021.08.28.21262763

[2] Burges Watson, D.L., Campbell, M., Hopkins, C., Smith, B., Kelly, C. and Deary, V., 2021. Altered smell and taste: Anosmia, parosmia and the impact of long Covid-19. PloS one, 16(9), p.e0256998.

Biography:
Dr Duika Burges Watson is a lecturer in Population and Health Sciences. Her research interests are in food from source to senses and how our sensory experience of food may be altered by illness, life course transitions, and the environmental upheavals of the Anthropocene. With Professor Vincent Deary she supervises a growing number of postgraduate students who are using the Altered Eating approach to address chronic difficulties with food and eating in various conditions. She has developed interactive ‘food play’ methods for teaching and learning and employs post-cartesian and visceral understandings of food systems from source to senses.

Speaker: Prof Ana M Valdes, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham

Title: “Exercise and dietary modulation of  inflammation via microbiome composition and function”

Date: Monday 25 October 2021

Video Link: https://youtu.be/qiqjaFDnhYE

Synopsis:
Both nutrition and exercise  modulates the immune system and may alter the inflammatory processes implicated in several non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes and influence immune responses to infectious diseases.  I will present results from the PREDICT 1 study ( n=1,102 healthy UK/US adults) to examine the postprandial metabolic responses to a series of meal challenges in clinic and at home and to examine the links between habitual diet, gut microbiome composition and inflammation. To further investigate the links between inflammatory markers and diet we carried out a 6 week nutritional intervention in 72 healthy research participants, half of them took 500mg of omega-3 supplements, half of them 20 of soluble dietary fibre (inulin). We also performed a 6 week exercise (physiotherapy) randomised controlled trial in individuals with arthritis and evaluated inflammatory markers, gut microbiome composition and levels of short chain fatty acids. I present results showing how both exercise and diet influence inflammatory profiles, how the proportion of the effect mediated by gut microbes can be estimated and the role of short chain fatty acids and the endocannabinoid system in mediating such effects.

Biography:
Ana Valdes is Professor of Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology at the School of Medicine, University of Nottingham. She trained at the University of California Berkeley and after working in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries is now dedicated to investigating the molecular basis of complex diseases such as diabetes, obesity , arthritis and hypertension. Her recent research on gut microbiome and metabolomics in dietary and exercise interventions is aimed at understanding the mechanisms by which lifestyle changes modulate the gut microbiome and antinflammatory and energy metabolism related pathways involved in improved health outcomes.

Speaker: Dr Elisa Miles, Senior Research Funding Development Manager, RSD-Research Funding Development, Newcastle University

Title: “EU and International Research Funding Landscape”

Date: Monday 18 October 2021

Video Link: https://youtu.be/gsu7SAgFBiI

Speaker: Dr Francene Steinberg, Professor and Chair, Director Didactic Program in Dietetics Nutritionist in AES, University of California, Davis, USA

Title: “Postmenopausal women’s health – Insights into metabolic responses to consuming eggs”

Date: Monday 24th May 2021

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auhBFZMEfFM

Synopsis:
Eggs are a rich source of protein and nutrients, yet the inclusion of eggs in healthful diet patterns and national dietary recommendations has been controversial. This seminar will present results of a dietary intervention in postmenopausal women consuming whole eggs compared to an intervention period consuming yolk-free eggs. Metabolic responses to egg consumption that will be discussed include: HDL function, lipoprotein metabolism and associated cardiovascular risk markers, gut microbiome and TMAO formation, and exploratory data on gene expression and HDL miRNA.

Biography:
Dr Francene Steinberg is a Professor and Corrine L. Rustici Endowed Chair in Human Nutrition of the Nutrition Department at University of California Davis (UC Davis). She received her PhD from UC Davis, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington - School of Medicine, and has been a faculty member at UC Davis since 1996.  She has 25 years of academic experience in research and teaching about health and nutritional sciences, which builds on her early career as a practicing clinical dietitian. She currently is the Department Chairperson and the Director of the Didactic Program in Dietetics. Dr. Steinberg’s research program focuses on foods, food components and food choices that impact health outcomes. Specific areas of interest are the physiologic effects of bioactive food components to reduce risk factors for cardiovascular and obesity-related chronic diseases. Her goals are to examine nutritional phenotypes, metabolism and biomarkers of response to dietary intake for health promotion and chronic disease risk reduction. She contributes to multidisciplinary teams, designs and leads clinical trials with dietary interventions that contribute to scientific research on nutrition for metabolic health.

Speaker: Shireen Kassam, Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at King’s College Hospital

Title: "Can a plant-based diet support optimal human health?"

Date: Monday 17th May 2021

Video Link: not available

Synopsis:
There is an urgent need to transition to a plant-based food system to prevent further climate and ecological breakdown. But is a plant-based diet healthy? In this talk, Shireen Kassam will review the evidence supporting plant-based diets for promoting optimal human health and well-being and will discuss areas of controversy.

Biography:
Shireen Kassam is a Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at King’s College Hospital, London with a specialist interest in the treatment of patients with lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system). She is also passionate about promoting plant-based nutrition for the prevention and reversal of chronic diseases and for maintaining optimal health after treatment for cancer.

She qualified as a medical doctor in 2000, initially training in general medicine, and gaining Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP; 2003). She then specialised in Haematology and achieved Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath; 2008). During training, she took time out to undertake a PhD (University of London, 2011). Her research investigated the role of selenium, an essential micronutrient, in sensitising cancer cells to chemotherapy. She was able to show that supra-nutritional doses of selenium could enhance the action of chemotherapy in the laboratory. She has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the field of lymphoma.

Shireen discovered the power of nutrition for the prevention and treatment of disease in 2013 and since then has been following a whole food plant-based diet. She has immersed herself in the science of nutrition and health and completed the eCornell certification in plant-based nutrition. In 2019 she became certified as a Lifestyle Medicine Physician by the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. She is also a certified CHIP (Complete Health Improvement Program) practitioner.

Shireen founded Plant-based health professionals UK in 2017 in order to bring evidence-based education on plant-based nutrition to the UK. Since then she has been appointed as Visiting Professor of Plant-Based Nutrition at Winchester University where she has developed and facilitates the UK’s only University-based CPD-accredited course on plant-based nutrition for healthcare professionals. In January 2021, Shireen co-founded and launched the UK’s first CQC registered, online, multi-disciplinary, plant-based lifestyle medicine healthcare service, Plant Based Health Online.  She is also a member of the Research Advisory Committee for the Vegan Society. Her work has been published by The Times, Mirror, Metro, Plant Based News and BBC food.

Speaker: Dr Catherine Meplan, Lecturer in Genetics, School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences

Title: “Selenium, Cancer and Nutritional genomics: from SNPs to molecular pathways”

Date: Monday 26th April 2021

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQrgv78DEE

Synopsis:
The role of diet and nutrition in carcinogenesis and cancer prevention and the identification of nutritional factors and supplements with cancer preventive properties have been areas of active research for decades. Dietary factors that reduce cancer risk have the potential to have major public health implications, but supplementations trials have often yielded disappointing results. Among these nutritional factors, the micronutrient selenium (Se) has received considerable attention as a potential cancer preventive agent. However, if small amounts of selenium are essential for certain biological functions in humans, higher amounts can pose a toxicity risk, making selenium an element with a narrow safe range of exposure. There is now a converging body of evidence from epidemiological, clinical, functional studies and more recently nutritional genomics studies linking low Se intake to cancer.

This presentation will highlight how nutritional genomics studies can contribute to our understanding of the role of selenium in cancer preventive mechanisms, by identifying genes, proteins and molecular pathways affected by Se, and implicated in cancer pathways.

Biography:
Catherine is a Lecturer in Genetics, based in BNS. She has worked at Newcastle University since 2003. She is also the Chair for the Biochemistry and Biomedical genetics curriculum committee and the EDI lead for the BNS school. Her research interests focus on the application of nutrigenomics technologies to better understand the relationship between selenium status and various cancers. She has contributed to the discovery of how genetic variations in selenoprotein genes influence selenium bioavailability, and to our understanding of how selenium status affects molecular pathways involved in cancer development. She has collaborated on several European projects looking at the effects of interactions between inherited genetic variations and selenium status on disease risk. Previously, she has worked on the p53 tumour suppressor protein and cancer at the Biomedical Research Centre (Dundee University, UK), and during her PhD in Biology at the WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, Lyon, France).

Speaker: Dr Frances Hillier-Brown, Lecturer, PHSI, Newcastle University

Title: “The double imbalance: socio-economic inequalities in obesity”

Date: Monday 19th April 2021

Video Link: This seminar was not recorded.

Synopsis:
Socio-economic inequalities in obesity remain persistent in children and adults in the UK and other high-income countries, with little sign of decline. Reducing health inequalities is identified as a priority action in recent public health and obesity policy; however, clear mechanisms for achieving this, including the recognition of the complexity and social determinants of health, is often lacking. Although it is widely agreed that upstream, structural, low agency interventions offer the best solutions for tackling socio-economic inequalities in obesity, gaps in research evidence remain due to a number of factors including the under-representation of less affluent groups; lack of consideration of differential effects; and the complexity of evaluating such interventions.

This presentation will give an overview of my past and present work exploring the effectiveness of public health interventions on the reduction of socio-economic inequalities in obesity, including a focus on intervention-generated inequalities and understanding where exclusion may occur within intervention and research processes. I will also present my ideas for future research and direction, particularly aimed at understanding experiences of food insecurity and associations with health.

Biography:
Frances is a Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition based within the Human Nutrition Research Centre and Population Health Sciences Institute. She joined Newcastle University in February this year from Durham University, where she had worked as a research associate on a number of multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional health research projects. Frances’s core research interests centre on the provision of equitable population-wide health promotion, with a particular focus on healthy eating and physical activity behaviours for the prevention of chronic disease. Her work has been used to shape local policy and national guidance on food environments and child health. Frances is a member of Fuse, The Centre of Translational Research in Public Health, and The Association for the Study of Obesity, and is a founder member of the Equal North Research and Practice Network that has now been expanded to the Equal England: Health Inequalities Knowledge Exchange Network.

Speakers: Dr Angela Jones, Dr Lorraine McSweeney and Hannah Batten, Newcastle University

Title: “Conducting patient and public involvement (PPI) in the MapMe2 childhood obesity prevention study during a pandemic: challenges and adaptions”

Date: Monday 12 April 2021

Video Link: This seminar was not recorded.

Synopsis:
The MapMe2 study has evolved from previous work conducted at Newcastle University which found parents tend not to recognise overweight in their child and so do not take action. In response to this we have created the MapMe intervention which is a web-based tool consisting of body image scales of 4-5 and 10-11 year old children of known weight status. The MapMe intervention also includes information on the consequences of being overweight in childhood, healthy eating, physical activity and links to further support. Embedded within the National Child Measurement Programme, the MapMe intervention will be tested in a large randomised controlled trial in around 56,000 families, across 9 local authorities.

The MapMe2 study originally had a 3-year time frame but, as with many other things, COVID-19 impacted progress, delaying the project by a full academic year. However, this has allowed us extra time to focus on PPI with parents and expert stakeholders, to obtain input on the study development, materials and application for ethical approval. Due to Covid-19, the PPI contributions have to date, all taken place remotely and whilst the team have tried to use creative methods to engage and support parents and experts in the process, we have faced some challenges.

This presentation will give an overview of the development of the MapMe 2 study and our experiences of setting up and conducting PPI remotely with parents and experts during a pandemic. The adaptions, how we overcame challenges and how PPI is shaping the study will be discussed.

Biographies:
Angela Jones is a Research Associate based within the Human Nutrition Research Centre, Population Health Sciences Institute and is the lead researcher for the MapMe2 study. Angela’s PhD, which she completed at Newcastle University, explored physiological and attitudinal responses to the consumption of wholegrain foods. After completion, Angela continued to work at the Human Nutrition Research Centre as a researcher on the Gateshead Millennium Study (GMS) which explored the early origins of obesity. Angela’s specific role within the GMS was to examine dietary intake within the cohort and explore parents’ perceptions of child’s weight status. Angela’s main research interests are in nutrition and childhood obesity, and identifying effective strategies for prevention of overweight and obesity in children.

Lorraine McSweeney is a Research Associate based within the Human Nutrition Research Centre, Population Health Sciences Institute. Lorraine’s PhD, which she completed at Newcastle University, was a mixed methods feasibility study to determine which behaviour change strategies to improve diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviours in preschool children aged 3-5 years would be acceptable to nursery practitioners and parents. Since completion, Lorraine has worked as a qualitative researcher at Newcastle on several public health studies including parental perceptions of the hospital food environment, school foods, older people’s access to food and clinical trials involving tonsillectomy in adults and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Her research interests include obesity, behaviour change interventions, health behaviours and qualitative research methods.

Hannah Batten is completing a BSc Food and Human Nutrition degree at Newcastle University. She is currently on a placement year with the Human Nutrition Research Centre, Population Health Sciences Institute, working specifically on the MapMe2 project. One of her key roles is to work closely with the PPI team, where she has created training and welcome videos for parents. Hannah has also created a blog post about conducting PPI during a pandemic that was posted on the Fuse website.

Speaker: Dr Daniela Barile, Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California, Davis, USA

Title: “Discovering Naturally Occurring Prebiotic Oligosaccharides in foods and agricultural by-products”

Date: Monday 22 March 2021

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPP74NZ8jXI

Synopsis:
Particular attention is focused nowadays on functional compounds called oligosaccharides, as these molecules act on many different physiological systems through a wide variety of mechanisms, ranging from interaction with commensal bacteria to binding viruses and toxins.

Oligosaccharides are highly concentrated in human milk but are much less abundant in other animal milks, and their presence in the dairy marketplace is scarce. With improved production and isolation strategies, these compounds could be recovered from dairy processing streams for use as ingredients in infant formula and adult therapeutics. By using liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and other techniques, oligosaccharides can be measured accurately and reproducibly, enabling confident scaling and processing decisions to be made when considering novel ingredient manufacturing.

Currently, little is known about variations in oligosaccharides production among dairy cattle and the factors that impact their abundance, such as breed and diet. Therefore, it is important to develop methods for measuring milk OS abundance in large sample sets by implementing novel techniques for high-throughput profiling. Examining the influence of genetics and diets on bioactive compound formation will provide insights into ways to increase the value of liquid milk.

The combined use of new “omics” enables researchers to achieve molecular-level understanding of functional compounds in milk and guides the development of engineering methods to capture value from our food side-streams improving the sustainability of the agricultural enterprise.

This presentation will introduce some case studies to demonstrate how various agricultural by-products (e.g. cheese whey permeate, grape pomace, coffee spent grounds, hazelnut skins and more) can be valorized, particularly regarding the prebiotic oligosaccharides content, and used to promote human health.

Biography:
Originally from Italy, Daniela joined the Faculty of the Food Science Department at the University of California Davis in 2011. Daniela’s lab researches the chemical and biological properties of food components to generate novel ingredients that ameliorate human health. She was promoted to Full Professor in 2018 and recently received the Chancellor’s Fellow Award and the Innovator of the Year Award, given to outstanding faculty members producing ground-breaking research and scholarship early in their careers.

Her capacity to translate basic research findings to actual practical value is of significant relevance, thanks to a network of over 20 food industries that routinely collaborate with her lab. The highly collaborative aspect of her research is evidenced by the publication of over 100 manuscripts in leading peer-reviewed food science journals and specialized books, which have already been cited over 4000 times.

Daniela is also a co-founder of Evolve Biosystems, a start-up dedicated to developing the next generation of products to restore a healthy gut microbiome in new-borns.

More info about Daniela’s laboratory activities and current projects can be found here.

Speaker: Dr Moneeza Siddiqui, Principal Investigator & Baxter Fellow, Division of Population Health & Genetics, School of Medicine, University of Dundee

Title: "Young onset type 2 diabetes in Asian Indians"

Date: Monday 15 March 2021

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDYljHrO4UM

Synopsis:
Asian Indians in particular and South Asians more generally have a well-documented, increased risk for type 2 diabetes. The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) projects that by 2045 there will be 151.4 million indigenous South Asians with type 2 diabetes, almost doubling the present prevalence. Most studies examining anthropometric and clinical risk factors in this ethnic group have been conducted in migrant South Asian populations, often lacking detailed information on traits such as insulin resistance or beta cell function. South Asians are also under-represented in genetic studies of diabetes susceptibility.

In this seminar, I will present results from one of the largest studies of diabetes in Asian Indians with young onset diabetes. The data suggest that Asian Indians develop early onset diabetes in the absence of overweight and obesity. We provide evidence that this is driven by lower beta-cell function. We support this claim by demonstrating Asian Indians with diabetes have a lower genetically determined beta cell function associated with type 2 diabetes risk than white Europeans with diabetes

Biography:
Moneeza trained in epidemiology in the United States and then moved to Scotland to undertake a PhD over 7 years ago. She has worked in the fields of pharmacogenetics and precision medicine for diabetes and related comorbidities. She is currently a Principal Investigator and Baxter Fellow at the University of Dundee. Her fledgling research group has two PhD students. Together they work on South Asian diabetes, pharmacogenetics and understanding the interaction between social and genetic risk factors in predicting disease.

She would very much like to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Speaker: Dr Claire McEvoy, Dietitian & Lecturer in Human Nutrition, Queen’s University Belfast

Title: "Mediterranean diet and cognitive decline – strengthening epidemiological evidence and encouraging behaviour change"

Date: Monday 8 March 2021

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3RmH964mQE

Synopsis:

Modifying behaviour towards a healthful dietary pattern, particularly the Mediterranean Diet, could be a promising way to enhance cognitive performance and delay or prevent dementia in later life. However, the strength of association has not been comprehensively evaluated, particularly in non-Mediterranean populations, and may be influenced by other interacting factors (e.g. ethnicity, genetics, nutritional status) and the cognitive end-point studied. This presentation will discuss current evidence on relations between diet and cognitive health during ageing and examine efforts to understand how best to achieve behaviour change towards a Mediterranean Diet, particularly in non-Mediterranean and high-risk population

Biography:

Dr Claire McEvoy is a Dietitian and Lecturer in Human Nutrition at Queen’s University Belfast where her research investigates the role of nutrition in healthy ageing. She leads a research programme spanning two main areas: (1) Evaluation of dietary risk factors in relation to disease risk in cohort studies, and (2) Development and testing of diet and lifestyle interventions to promote behaviour change in vulnerable populations. Specifically, she is interested in how dietary patterns influence neurodegeneration, sarcopenia and cardiometabolic disease risk. Dr McEvoy is recipient of several awards including The Beeson-CARDI Career Development Fellowship (American Federation of Aging Research) and The Wellcome Trust Seed Award in Science (2016). She is Principal Investigator of a European Healthy Life Healthy Diet (HDHL) Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) project grant to investigate a 'PROtein enriched MEDiterranean diet to combat undernutrition and promote healthy neuroCOGnitive ageing in older adults: PROMED-COG' (2021-2023). Dr McEvoy is an Alumni Senior Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, University of California, San Francisco and Trinity College Dublin and her research has featured in The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, and The UK Conversation.

Speaker: Susan Lennie, Senior Lecturer, School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sports Sciences, Newcastle University

Title: “Advancing Anthropometric Techniques”

Date: Monday 22 February 2021

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa8y4KY75Ho

Synopsis:

Body dimensions and composition are often estimated using techniques such as weight, stature, girths and skinfold thickness measurements. Measurements are traditionally collected by a trained technician to ensure accuracy and reproducibility; however, this can be time-consuming and costly to conduct. As a result, they are not suitable for public health monitoring of individuals and populations. For this reason, epidemiological studies often rely on self-administered questionnaires to obtain data. This talk will consider the potential role of technology in advancing the accurate collection of anthropometric data on a population-wide basis.

Biography:

Susan is a registered dietitian with over 20 years’ experience in clinical and academic dietetics. She is a Level 3 anthropometry instructor with the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry.

Speaker: Dr Adem Dawed, Principal Investigator (Tenure Track), Population Health and Genomics, School of Medicine, Dundee University

Title: "The genetics of drug response in type 2 diabetes"

Date: Monday 15 February 2021

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb3RpiG8O0A

Synopsis:

Despite an increasing array of drugs available to treat type 2 diabetes, considerable heterogeneity exists in response to treatment. It is likely that a combination of genetic and non-genetic modifying factors underlies the clinical variability of glycaemic response to drugs. While many clinical risk factors are identified, modulatory genetic factors remain largely unexplored. To help address this, we augment electronic health records data with genetics to identify potential biomarkers. We hope this research will help us better understand and identify subgroups of patients with type 2 diabetes who are likely to benefit.

Biography:

Adem Dawed obtained a PhD in Pharmacogenomics from the University of Dundee in 2017. He took up the appointment of Baxter Fellow and Principal Investigator in Precision Medicine at the University of Dundee in 2020 after holding postdoctoral positions. Adem is interested to understand factors affecting pathophysiology, disease progression and treatment outcomes in cardiometabolic diseases with the aim to embed genomic information in routine prescription practice.

Speaker: Dr Orla Collins, DPD BSc Food Business Management and Marketing, Lecturer in Food Marketing, Applied Social Sciences, SNES, Newcastle University

Title: “Healthy Ageing: The ageing consumer market and consumer-led product development”

Date: Monday 8 February 2021

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we0zIu7ldSQ

Synopsis:

Major factors influencing food development and food marketing strategies in global marketplaces at present can be attributable to the changing age structure of the population. The significant shifts in global age structure will inevitably lead to the number of people aged 60 reaching an all-time high of 1.4 billion by the year 2030 representing 16.4% of the global population. The rapidly growing population of ageing people represents a large, neglected and very much under-developed category within the Food Industry. Health and wellness have become an area of considerable growth and have demanded a lot of attention in both developed and emerging food and beverage markets. The rising incidence of chronic diseases coupled with the ageing process is driving consumers to shift toward healthier food options. Increasing consumer interest and knowledge, and a better understanding of the immunity enhancing property of proper diet and food habits, are some of the key factors driving the growth of the global functional food ingredients market. Consumer acceptance of functional foods has been recognised as a key factor to successfully negotiate market opportunities. However, the marketing of functional foods presents food firms with a range of key challenges. One of the main barriers to success, is the marketing of science and health technologies to consumers.

In this talk, I will discuss research exploring ageing consumer-led product development. Health and nutrition claims in products try to respond to consumers’ interest in health, by conveying messages about product-specific benefits that potentially add value to products. I will present food concepts developed by ageing consumers with design features that promote health and wellbeing, and I will discuss key design features that potentially add value and result in higher levels of consumer acceptance. In reference to the consumer, nutrition and health claims are just some of the factors used by consumers when assessing the products’ potential benefit. Overall, emphasising health as a product characteristic may influence other product-related expectations and imply a negative impact on taste, naturalness, and convenience of the product and thus impact consumer acceptance levels.

Biography:

Orla completed her PhD in University College Cork, Ireland under the supervision of Prof. Joe Bogue. Her research explored the theory of market-oriented new product development and the development of health promoting food concepts for the ageing population. Upon completion, Orla moved to Saudi Arabia to take up an Associate Professor role in Marketing in Princess Nourah University and continued her research on new product development. In September 2018 Orla joined the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences in Newcastle University and aims to continue her research on the ageing population.

Speaker: Dr Adrian Holliday, Lecturer in Exercise Physiology.  School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sports Science

Title: “Stimulating Appetite and Promoting Food Intake in Older Adults at Risk of the ‘Anorexia of Ageing’”

Date: Monday 1 February 2021

Video Link: https://youtu.be/oBvIgaljj70

Synopsis:

Ageing is associated with a reduction in appetite and energy intake. This “anorexia of aging”, coupled with a consequent protein-energy malnutrition, is associated with poor health status and increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Low energy and protein intakes lead to a negative energy balance and catabolism, resulting in unwanted loss of muscle mass. This loss of skeletal muscle with aging, termed sarcopenia, leads to reduced functional capacity, increased frailty and increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Muscle mass is considered the primary driver of tonic appetite and energy intake, such that a loss of muscle due to protein-energy malnutrition could further reduce appetite and food intake: a vicious cycle of loss of appetite and muscle thus ensues.

However, while it is well established that resistance exercise and protein supplementation can promote gains in muscle mass, such high-intensity exercise can transiently suppress appetite, and protein is the most satiating of the macronutrients. This could acutely compromise energy balance and anabolism.

In this talk, I will share with you some recent research exploring appetite and food intake response to resistance exercise training in older adults, before outlining future investigation for increasing appetite and food intake in older adults at risk of protein-energy malnutrition and sarcopenia.

Biography:

Adrian completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham as part of the Exercise Metabolism Research Group, under the supervision of Dr Andy Blannin and Prof Asker Jeukendrup. His work explored exercise and appetite regulation in both athletes and those with excess body fat. After a one-year Post-Doc position at the University of Birmingham conducting a physical activity-focussed weight-management study, Adrian moved to the University of Worcester to take up a role of Lecturer in Physiology and Nutrition, and then on to Leeds Beckett University as a Senior Lecturer in Physical Activity, Nutrition. During that time, Adrian continued his research within the field of appetite regulation. He has pursued attempts to manipulate appetite for reductions in energy intake for those with excess body fat, but his most recent, and future, work attempts to better understand mechanisms of appetite regulation in older adults at risk of the “anorexia of ageing” and protein-energy malnutrition. He joined Newcastle University in November and is excited to continue this line of research. His aim is to identify interventions to increase food intake in such at risk older adults, helping to maintain muscle mass and functional capacity, and promote healthy ageing.

Speaker: Dr Justin Lang, Epidemiologist, Public Health Agency of Canada

Title: “The international surveillance of physical fitness among children and youth: a public health perspective”

Date: Monday 25 January 2021

Video Link: https://youtu.be/wSxAdhJjaYo

Synopsis:

Physical fitness is an important marker of health among children and youth, with some evidence suggesting that physical fitness status in adolescence may predict future health outcomes in adulthood. The field-based measurement of physical fitness is scalable, cost-effective, and practical, yet little has been done to adopt these measures in national and global health surveillance systems. This presentation will highlight recent evidence that describes the utility of physical fitness as a population health surveillance indicator among children and youth, including current efforts underway, and areas for future research.

Biography:

Dr Justin Lang is an Epidemiologist at the Public Health Agency of Canada in the Centre for Surveillance and Applied Research. In 2017, he obtained his PhD from the University of Ottawa, where his dissertation focused on the measurement of cardiorespiratory fitness among children and youth, and its utility for population health surveillance. His research combined data from over 1.1 million children and youth from 50 countries to identify the populations with the highest and lowest levels of cardiorespiratory fitness. In 2019, Dr Lang began a postdoctoral fellowship with the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Carleton University to investigate the impact of the built environment on health and cause-specific mortality among Canadians. He is also an affiliate investigator with the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute.

Speaker: Dr Carl Hulston, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University

Title: “The metabolic responses to acute overfeeding in humans”

Date: Monday 18 January 2021

Video Link: https://youtu.be/uXlvzOxS3YA

Synopsis:

Excessive food intake combined with insufficient physical activity is driving the obesity epidemic, which is a major risk factor for cardiometabolic disorders, including glucose intolerance, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. However, just a few days of excessive dietary fat intake can impair insulin action and glycaemic control in healthy nonobese individuals. Understanding these early responses may provide insight into metabolic disease progression. This talk will share data from recent studies in which we have used short-term, high-fat overfeeding to study the tissue-specific contributions to impairments in glycaemic control.

Biography:

Dr Carl Hulston obtained his PhD at the University of Birmingham, where his thesis focused on nutritional strategies to enhance performance and training adaptation in elite endurance athletes. These studies utilised stable isotope tracers to determine changes in carbohydrate and fat metabolism in response to various diet and exercise interventions. He then went on to work as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Copenhagen Muscle Research Centre, Denmark. Here he learnt more invasive procedures, such as arterial venous catheterisation and the Bergstöm needle biopsy technique, that were needed to get a more detailed handle on tissue level substrate metabolism in human health and disease. After completing his post-doctoral training, Carl took up his first Lectureship at Brunel University (2010-2012). In 2012, Carl moved to Loughborough University, where his work focused on the metabolic responses to acute and chronic changes in energy balance. Carl joined Newcastle University in May 2020, as Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science.

Speaker: Cecilia Samieri, PhD, tenure-track researcher INSERM (French National Institute for health) and University of Bordeaux, France.

Title: “Food exposome, cardiometabolic health and brain ageing”

Date: Monday 11 January 2021

Video Link: https://youtu.be/pWMg7EoE4pM

Synopsis:

Dementia results from a dynamical cascade of neuropathological processes involving two major components: a lesional component, made of different types of brain lesions accumulated over many years, and a compensatory component, defined by reserve and resilience mechanisms. Nutrition has the potential to modulate both components and may thus strongly contribute to dementia prevention. This presentation will provide an overview of current knowledge on the relation of diet with brain aging, with a life-course epidemiological perspective. We will use examples of research conducted in cohorts with very long follow-up, such as the French Three-City study and the US Nurses’ Health Study, to illustrate the links between nutrition, cardiometabolic heath and dementia. We will adopt a bottom–up approach, from candidate nutrients considered individually to a global approach through nutrient and diet patterns. We will show how epidemiological studies can inform on potential cerebral pathways (using brain imaging) and on the life-course nutrition trajectories preceding the onset of disease. We will introduce novel approaches of the food exposome, including diet networks and exploration of the food metabolome. The final goal of our research community is to understand how, and in which time windows over the lifecourse, nutrition and cardiometabolic health modulate both neuropathology and reserve/resilience mechanisms, and ultimately help prevent dementia.

Biography:

After a doctorate in veterinary medicine, Cécilia Samieri obtained a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of Bordeaux (France) in 2009, and then trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Channing Division of Network Medicine, Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA). Back in France, she joined INSERM (French National Institute for Health) as a permanent researcher in 2015, in the Bordeaux Population Health Research Center, INSERM U1219.

Cécilia Samieri's research focuses on the exposome of brain aging, with the main objective of understanding how environmental factors, including nutrition and cardiometabolic health, influence the etiology of age-related brain diseases, such as dementia and its leading cause, Alzheimer's disease. She has worked on several large cohorts on dementia and cognitive decline, studying with a holistic view the influence of lifestyle on brain health, from overall lifestyle patterns (eg, dietary patterns) to molecular markers of the exposome. Cécilia Samieri has led several projects on the environmental risk factors of Alzheimer's disease, and she is academic co-chair of the Alzheimer’s Association's Professional Interest Area group on Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases.

Speaker: Prof James Betts, Department for Health, Institute for Mathematical Innovation, Centre for Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism, University of Bath

Title: “Feeding Time”

Date: Monday 7 December 2020

Synopsis:

In this seminar Professor Betts will consider the various considerations surrounding nutrient timing, such as when to start and stop eating each day, how frequently to eat and how to schedule mealtimes relative to daily cycles in day/night, sleep/waking and rest/activity. The potential for poorly timed nutritional intake to impaired human health and function will be considered, with practical recommendations to improve these outcomes.

Biography:

James is Professor of Metabolic Physiology at the University of Bath, where he is Co-Director of the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise & Metabolism and Chair of the Department for Health Research Ethics Committee. His research employs randomised controlled trials to study the effects of nutrition on metabolic regulation, the findings of which have been published in scientific papers in top-ranking scholarly journals. A particular focus of his work has been to examine the links between nutrient timing and human health, for which James was awarded the Nutrition Society Cuthbertson Medal at the Royal Society of Medicine for 'excellence in clinical nutrition and metabolism research'. James contributes widely within the University, having supervised many doctoral students through their research training; his integration of research into teaching was recognised by the University's Mary Tasker Award for excellence in teaching.

Speaker: Prof Peter McCaffery, Personal Chair, Institute of Medical Sciences, Aberdeen University

Title: “Can you make a disease treating drug out of a vitamin?”

Date: Monday 30 November 2020

Video Link: https://youtu.be/5zgUgaCWvqo

Synopsis:

Vitamin A is one of the fat-soluble vitamins and perhaps low on the list of chemicals you would attempt to design a drug from. However, its action, via its metabolite retinoic acid, has many beneficial effects in the central nervous system and may be of use for diseases in which neurons progressively die – the neurodegenerative diseases. The presentation will discuss development of a putative drug acting on the retinoic acid receptor as a therapeutic for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), in which motor neurons are the cell type that die. The function vitamin A may normally have in the brain, as well as motor neurons, is discussed. The development of an analogue of retinoic acid will be then described and how its properties may provide a therapy for ALS.

Biography:

I graduated in Biochemistry at Victoria University, New Zealand and obtained a Ph.D. in Pathology at Otago University, New Zealand in 1987. After post-doctoral research at Harvard Medical School I became Instructor and then Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, where I first developed my interest in retinoic acid in the developing central nervous system. After working at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA as Associate Professor in Cell Biology, I moved to the University of Aberdeen in 2006. There I was co-director of the Institute of Medical Sciences until 2015. My research into retinoic acid continues with a focus on its function in the hypothalamus as well as its potential to protect in neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, the latter including Alzheimer’s and motor neuron disease.

Speaker: Prof Jeff Breckon, Sheffield Hallam University, Head of Research in Sport, Professor in Physical Activity Behaviour Change

Title: “You can try and convince them to change all you like: Managing ambivalence to change lifestyle behaviours using Motivational Interviewing”

Date: Monday 23 November 2020

Video Link: https://youtu.be/mhfI53_GhKQ

Synopsis:

Motivational Interviewing (MI; Miller & Rollnick, 2013) has been described as a collaborative conversation style for strengthening a person’s own motivation and commitment to change. It works by exploring an individual's ambivalence about health behaviours using an empathic yet challenging approach blending technical and relational components in a strategic manner (Breckon, 2015). MI is being applied extensively across a range of health behaviour and lifestyle settings and has been found to be effective in shared decision making as part of patient-centred interventions. This presentation will critique the current evidence regarding MI in lifestyle behaviour change across public health settings. It will consider the role of integrative therapies such as MI-CBT and the evidence regarding the initiation and maintenance of behaviour change. Finally, it will consider key issues in ensuring the intervention is delivered as intended using a treatment fidelity approach.

Biography:

Jeff is Head of Research in Sport and Professor in Physical Activity Behaviour Change at Sheffield Hallam University. His main area of expertise and activity is in the clinical application of behaviour change counselling using integrative therapies such as MI-CBT. He has been a practitioner since starting in the NHS in 1992 and has developed an international reputation for the design, training and application of behaviour change interventions using this approach across a range of clinical and community settings. He is a BPS and HCPC Chartered Sport and Exercise Psychologist and helped write and validate the BPS Qualification in Sport and Exercise Psychology (QSEP) in 2008, after which he became the founding Chief Assessor for QSEP. He is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) and was trained in MI in 1996 and as an MI trainer by Professor Bill Miller and Professor Steve Rollnick (Quebec, 2000).

Speaker: Dr Charles Stephensen, Professor of Nutrition, University of California, Davis & Research Leader, Immunity and Disease Prevention Research Unit, USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Centre in Davis, CA

Title: “Effect of neonatal vitamin A supplementation on immune function in Bangladeshi infants, results from a randomized, controlled trial”

Date: Monday 16 November 2020

Video Link: https://youtu.be/4Ce0hBiC6OA

Synopsis:

Vitamin A deficiency is still common in many areas or the world, including Bangladesh.  Infancy and early childhood are high-risk period for development of vitamin A deficiency.  Vitamin A supplementation is recommended to decrease mortality in infants and children from 6 m to 5 y of age, but evaluation of supplementation to newborns has shown more equivocal results, though benefits are seen in reducing mortality in settings where vitamin A deficiency in mothers is prevalent and the mortality rate in the first year of life is high.  This study was conducted in an urban setting in Dhaka, Bangladesh to evaluate the effect of 50,000 IU vitamin A (versus placebo) given within 48 ho of birth.  The study in 306 infants was designed to evaluate effects on immune function, focusing on endpoints that are affected by vitamin A, at least in cell culture or animal studies.  These, endpoints included (1) thymic function; (2) response to vaccines normally given in early infancy; and (3) mucosal targeting of lymphocytes.  Results on thymic function have been published, showing an unexpected transient decrease in thymus size and output of naïve T cells.  Results on mucosal targeting have also been published, showing an increase in chemokine receptor 9 (CCR9) expression, a marker of mucosal targeting, in lower birthweight infants, as expected.  Vaccine results are not yet published and will be discussed in the presentation.  Overall, vitamin A supplementation of newborns positively affected some endpoints (e.g., CCR9 expression) but did not improve other immune function measures.  One possible explanation for unexpected results is that the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency in mothers of these infants was low, even though vitamin A supplementation programs were active for infants and mothers in this community at the time of the study.  Different results might be seen in a more rural setting in Bangladesh, where vitamin A deficiency is more prevalent.

Biography:

Charles Stephensen is Research Leader of the Immunity and Disease Prevention Research Unit at the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Centre in Davis, CA and an Adjunct Professor of Nutrition at the University of California, Davis. He has a longstanding interest in the interaction of nutrition and infection.  His lab examined the effect of vitamin A deficiency (VAD) on viral infections using influenza A infection of mice and was the first to show that VAD impairs the respiratory IgA response. This and other work suggested that use of high-dose VA supplements might improve recovery from respiratory infections.  However, his group showed that such supplements transiently increased the severity of clinical signs of pneumonia in a clinical trial, highlighting potential negative effects of high-dose supplementation.  Infectious diseases also contribute to development of VAD, but how this occurs was not always clear.  Dr. Stephensen and colleagues identified a novel mechanism when they found that infections can cause substantial VA loss in the urine by impairing kidney tubule function.  Recently, his group has focused on the intestinal microbiome, finding that higher levels of intestinal bifidobacteria in early infancy, the time of receipt of many vaccines, is associated with better immune-memory to these vaccines at 2 y of age.  Current work is examining the effect of high-fibre, bifidogenic diets on the response to oral vaccines in adults.   Dr. Stephensen obtained an M.S. in Human Nutrition at Cornell University, a Ph.D. in Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, trained as a postdoc in Virology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and was a faculty member in the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham before moving to the USDA.

Speaker: Prof Marie Murphy, Professor of Exercise and Health, Dean of Postgraduate Research and Director of the Ulster Doctoral College, Ulster University

Title: “Walking for Health: man’s best medicine”

Date: Monday 9 November 2020

Video Link:         https://youtu.be/-6xda1N9Sg8

Synopsis:

Walking is now established as a cornerstone of public health promotion as a result of considerable research attention over the last 3 decades. This lecture will review some of the evidence for the health benefits associated with walking and consider the relative importance of duration and pace on these associations. Marie will present findings from recent reviews of interventions designed to promote walking in different populations and settings and consider the potential of walking to increase the proportion of the population meeting current physical activity guidelines.

Biography:

Marie is Professor of Exercise and Health, Dean of Postgraduate Research and Director of the Ulster Doctoral College. She graduated from Ulster with a BA Sport & Leisure and PGCE in Physical Education and was awarded an MSc in Sports Science and a PhD in Exercise Physiology from Loughborough University.

Marie’s research focuses on the effect of physical activity and exercise, in particular walking, on health and uses multidisciplinary approach that has included outcome measures ranging from the behavioural to the biochemical. Her work has contributed to the evidence base underlying the current physical activity guidelines in the US, UK and Ireland and she was a co-author of the UK guidelines by the 4 Chief Medical Officers in 2011 and 2019. 

Marie is principal investigator on the cross-border WISH (Walking In ScHools) Trial testing the efficacy of a school based intervention which uses peer-led walking groups to increase physical activity among adolescent girls.

Marie is a member of the UK Chief Medical Officer’s expert advisory group on physical activity. She is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the British Association of Sport & Exercise Sciences (BASES) and the Higher Education Academy and is vice-president of the WHO Europe Health Enhancing Physical Activity Steering Committee (HEPA Europe).

Marie was a member of the Research Excellence Framework 2014 sub-panel for Sport & Exercise Sciences Leisure & Tourism and is chair of this sub-panel for REF2021.

Marie has held public appointments on the Board of Sport Northern Ireland, the General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland and the Board of the International Society of Physical Activity and Health (ISPAH). She is an advisor to the Department for Communities on the development of the NI Sport and Physical Activity Strategy (Strategy 2020). She is an active gymnastics coach and chair of the Board of Directors of City of Lisburn Salto National Gymnastics Centre.

Speaker: Dr Benjamin Wall, Associate Professor of Nutritional Physiology, University of Exeter

Title: “Mycoprotein as an alternative dietary protein source for stimulating muscle protein synthesis rates”

Date: Monday 2 November 2020

Video Link: https://youtu.be/MqurG52fGQc

Synopsis:

The ingestion of dietary protein stimulates muscle protein synthesis rates, which provides the primary metabolic basis by which we maintain and recondition muscle tissue. The capacity of of a particular dietary protein source to stimulate muscle protein synthesis rates is primarily dictated by its amino acid composition, digestion and absorption kinetics and amino acid bioavailability following ingestion. Increasing evidence also suggests whether it is ingested as an isolate or within a whole food matrix may also influence postprandial muscle protein synthesis rates. While animal derived proteins offer excellent choices to stimulate muscle protein synthesis rates, increasing attention is being focussed at alternative protein sources, for which we have fewer data. Mycoprotein is a fungal derived protein rich whole food source. We have shown protein contained within mycoprotein to be relatively slow in its digestion and amino acid absorption, but with subsequent overall amino acid bioavailability and stimulation of muscle protein synthesis rates to be robust. This talk will review these human studies performed to date and address the potential for mycoproteins to be used as viable alternative dietary protein sources.

Biography:

Dr Benjamin Wall obtained his BSc from the University of Birmingham and his PhD from the University of Nottingham Medical School, where his thesis addressed the integration of fat and carbohydrate metabolism during exercise. Thereafter, Benjamin worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Maastricht University Medical Centre where he studied the nutritional regulation of muscle mass in health and disease. Benjamin has been at Exeter University since 2013 where he is currently an Associate Professor and co-leads the Nutritional Physiology Research Group based in the School of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Exeter, where his general research interests concern how nutrition and physical (in)activity influence metabolic health and performance in a variety of populations. Benjamin’s current research projects are focussed on how inactivity and ageing alters the capacity of muscle tissue to utilise nutrients, and how this can inform on optimising nutritional requirements for injured athletes and in support of healthy ageing. A particular interest is placed on developing an evidence base around novel and sustainable dietary protein sources in various populations.

Speaker: Ana Vinuela, PhD, NUAcT Fellow: Data Science in Health, Biosciences Institute, Newcastle University

Title: “Genetic variant effects on gene expression in human pancreatic islets and their implications for T2D”

Date: Monday 5 October 2020

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYBkusXTYLE

Synopsis:

Most signals detected by genome-wide association studies map to non-coding sequence and their tissue-specific effects influence transcriptional regulation. However, key tissues and cell-types required for functional inference are absent from large-scale resources. I will present our recent work exploring the relationship between genetic variants influencing predisposition to type 2 diabetes (T2D) and related glycemic traits, and human pancreatic islet transcription.

Speaker: Prof Nicholas D Embleton BSc MBBS MD FRCPCH, Consultant Neonatal Paediatrician, Royal Victoria Infirmary

Title: “Neonatal Nutrition research – trials and mechanisms”

Date: Monday 28 September 2020

Video Link: https://youtu.be/bFAxcSfgkjY

Synopsis:

Over the last 10 years we have established ourselves as a successful clinically-based research group conducting large RCTs & mechanistic studies focused on nutrition & gut complications.  Our work focuses on preterm infants, some who weigh less than 500g at birth.  The talk will discuss clinical & technical challenges, and mechanistic insights.

Biography:

Dr Nicholas Embleton is Consultant Neonatal Paediatrician, and Professor of Neonatal Medicine, Newcastle upon Tyne UK, having completed paediatric and neonatal training in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and Vancouver, Canada. His doctoral thesis was on ‘Protein Requirements in Preterm Infants’. Dr Embleton helps lead a broad portfolio of research coordinated by the NEWCASTLE NEONATAL NUTRITION & NECROTISING ENTEROCOLITIS (N4) RESEARCH TEAM based in Newcastle (see www.neonatalresearch.net ).

The research group includes the unique Great North Neonatal Biobank led by Clinical Director Dr Janet Berrington (orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-2843 ) that holds stool, urine, blood & breastmilk samples and data from over 1000 very preterm infants. Studies include large-scale NIHR nutrition trials that recruited >5000 preterm infants (www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/elfin and https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/sift ), in-house studies looking at immune development, and mechanistic microbiomic and metabolomic studies, as well as qualitative studies with parents.

Speaker: Boushra Dalile, (M.Sc.), PhD Student, Translational Research in Gastrointestinal Disorders (TARGID), Department of chronic diseases, metabolism, and ageing, Herestraat 49-O&N 1-Box 701, 3000 Leuven, Belgium

Title: “Short Chain Fatty Acids: Important Microbial Messengers in The Gut-Brain Axis”

Date: Monday 14 September 2020

Video Link: https://youtu.be/H6GHRsEeBN0

Synopsis:

Boushra’s presentation briefly discusses the (microbiota)-gut-brain axis and focuses specifically on the multiple mechanisms through which short chain fatty acids (the end products of dietary fibre fermentation in the colon) possibly mediate the bidirectional communicate between the gastrointestinal tract (and host microbiota) and the central nervous system, potentially extending the effects of fibre fermentation to psychological well-being. Furthermore, some original experimental results from her PhD will also be presented.

Biography:

Boushra Dalile obtained her Bachelor in Behavioural Studies (Psychology) from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia at the age of 19. She then completed a Master of Science in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Skövde, Sweden, under the supervision of Dr Oskar MacGregor. She was awarded the Global Swede Award by The Swedish Institute and the best Master’s Thesis in Cognitive Neuroscience for the year 2016 for her thesis entitled “Is the High Probability of Type II Error an Issue in Error Awareness ERP Studies?”. She was then a Guest Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, in Leipzig, Germany, where she was part of the research project “Sentence processing in modern standard Arabic and Levantine dialect regarding syntax and semantics using fMRI” at the Department of Neuropsychology (Prof. Dr Angela D. Friederici and Dr Tomás Goucha). Since 2017, she is a doctoral researcher at the Translational Research Centre for Gastrointestinal Disorders (TARGID) at KU Leuven, Belgium on the gut-brain axis, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Kristin Verbeke, Prof. Dr Lukas van Oudenhove, and Prof. Dr Bram Vervliet. Combining her previous experience in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and having acquired the necessary skills in biomedical sciences during the early stages of her PhD, she embarked on multidisciplinary research on the effects of dietary fibre and the role of short chain fatty acids in the microbiota-gut-brain axis, by conducting clinical trials and investigating the influence of such interventions on a multitude of psychobiological outcomes in humans, particularly stress sensitivity and fear learning and extinction. Boushra is passionate about foreign languages and has utilized Arabic, Swedish, German, and currently Dutch, throughout her research career. Her work was published in Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, and Neuropsychopharmacology.

Speaker: Dr Oliver Shannon, Population Health Sciences Institute

Title: "Talking Greek: Translating the Mediterranean diet into a UK-based dementia risk reduction strategy"

Date: Monday 9 March 2020

Synopsis:

Dementia prevalence continues to increase and effective interventions are urgently needed to prevent, delay, or slow the progression of this condition. Higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet - which has long been considered a paragon of healthy eating - has been proposed as potential strategy to facilitate healthy brain ageing and reduce dementia risk.  However, much of the evidence for a beneficial effect of this dietary pattern comes from studies conducted in the Mediterranean basin, and the applications of a Mediterranean diet in non-Mediterranean countries requires further exploration.  This presentation will explore the potential applications of the Mediterranean diet as a dementia risk reduction strategy in the UK, and will provide an update on the Alzheimer's Research UK funded MedEx-UK trial - an ongoing Mediterranean diet and physical activity intervention being conducted at Newcastle University, the University of Birmingham and the University of East Anglia.

Speaker: Mohammed Salman, PGR, Population Health Sciences Institute.

Title: "Investigating flavour-nutrient learning in human using novel-flavoured, selenium fortified biscuits"

Date: Thursday 5 March 2020

Synopsis:

As a basic definition, flavour-nutrient learning (FNL) is a learned increase in preference for the flavour of a food (solid or liquid) after repeated exposure, in response to a physiological nutritional benefit obtained from this food. The nutrient in the food (macro or micro-nutrient) is serving as unconditional stimulus, which leads to a conditioning response of flavour preference development (Conditional stimulus). Flavour-nutrient learning is widely demonstrated in animal studies for both nutrient types. However, there are no studies investigating flavour nutrient learning for micronutrients in human subjects. We conducted a systematic review to determine which nutrients are affected by flavour-nutrient learning in mammals in the literature and how flavour nutrient learning is explained by the authors. Additionally, a human trial was carried out to investigate flavour-nutrient learning in human subjects with sub-optimal nutritional selenium status. The study was a double-blinded, randomized two weeks intervention. The main hypothesis is that people in the low selenium status group will develop stronger preference toward their individual intervention flavour after daily consumption of 60 mcg selenium-fortified flavoured biscuit, compared with people in the high selenium status group. This hypothesis was built based upon animal studies, which showed that micro-nutrient deficient rats tended to prefer the flavour that paired with a diet or solution that contained the needed nutrient. Preliminary results are promising, but still not statistically significant, due to insufficient data collection. Therefore, more data is still required before we arrive at conclusion whether there is an effect of flavour nutrient learning in human or not.