Speakers

Heather Clark

Research Assistant

University of Aberdeen

Heather Clark graduated from the University of Glasgow with a BSc (Honours) in Biochemistry before completing an MSc in Human Nutrition & Metabolism at the University of Aberdeen. She joined the Rowett Research Institute in 2005 as a Research Assistant in the Human Appetite Research Group. A move to the University of Aberdeen saw her concentrating on large scale epidemiological studies before joining the Public Health Nutrition Research Group in 2012 with particular responsibility for the provision of the Scottish Collaborative Group Food Frequency questionnaire.

Dr Leone Craig

Research Fellow in Public Health Nutrition

University of Aberdeen

Dr Leone Craig graduated from the University of Aberdeen with a BSc (Honours) in Health Sciences and an MSc in Human Nutrition & Metabolism. In 2005 she completed a PhD in Nutrition at The Robert Gordon University focussing on the area of childhood obesity. She joined the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine in October 2003 as a Research Assistant on the SEATON study. She has been in her current post of Research Fellow in Public Health Nutrition since June 2005. From May to October 2007 she had a part-time secondment to the Food Standards Agency Scotland, Science Branch as a Scientific Advisor (Diet and Nutrition).

She has expertise in dietary assessment and cross-sectional and cohort studies of diet and health in children and adults, and of qualitative data collection and analysis, including cognitive interviewing for testing of questionnaires. Dr Craig was part of the team for the FSAS funded 2006 and 2010 surveys of diet in children in Scotland for which she was responsible for developing age appropriate FFQs and diet diaries and the FFQ analysis programme. Her current research includes the comparison of methods for global assessment of diet in relation to morbidity and mortality and evaluating the ability of simplified dietary assessment tools to assess compliance with dietary recommendations.

Baukje de Roos

Senior Research Scientist

Rowett Institute of Nutrition & Health, University of Aberdeen

Dr Baukje de Roos is an internationally recognized nutritionist working within the Rowett Institute of Nutrition & Health at the University of Aberdeen. Her main expertise lies in unraveling in vivo mechanisms of bioactive food components at the level of physiology and biochemistry. Her research program assesses novel mechanisms through which dietary fatty acids and plant polyphenols affect the development of major chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, and resilience to disease development. This is achieved not only by measuring their effect on validated risk markers (for example lipid levels, hematological function, blood pressure) but also by assessing their effect on novel biomarkers that are currently being identified through nutrigenomics technologies. Her expertise in the area of diet and health has formed the basis of significant contracts and consultancies with various large food companies (Stephan Nutrition, Cognis, MacPhie of Glenbervie, Provexis, Kelloggs), food levy boards (Seafish), the food and drink support sector (Food and Drink Innovation Service), and national UK television (Channel 4’s Food Hospital Series). She is an active member of the Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO), an EU funded Network of Excellence which merges the nutrigenomics activities of its scientific and academic partners across Europe. She is also a senior Editor for the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, and their Guest editor for a special issue on “Nutrition and Atherosclerosis”. Baukje de Roos is the Program Leader of the University of Aberdeen’s Theme "Pathways to a Healthy Life". This Theme is one of the four interdisciplinary Themes initiated as part of the University of Aberdeen’s strategic plan, aiming to facilitate and strengthen interdisciplinary collaborations that address the complex mechanisms by which individuals, lifestyle, the local community, socio-economic and environmental conditions affect healthy ageing.

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/rowett/research/baukje-de-roos.php

I am currently head of the Section for Nutrition Research and lead the Imperial Nutrition and Food Network.  I qualified as a dietitian in 1982 and have always maintained a clinical input throughout my career.  Was appointed to Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at Imperial College Jan 2008.  Prior to this, for 18 years Gary had work at Hammersmith Hospital.  Over his time at Hammersmith he gained his PhD in Nutrition and was appointed Honorary Reader in Nutrition at Imperial College, then joined the University of Surrey as Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics in 2005.  My research interests are very diverse, and some are listed below:

Dietary Carbohydrates: These are a major focus of my work has been on the role of dietary carbohydrates on appetite regulation, insulin resistances and lipid metabolism in particular the glycaemic index as a model of the physiological effects of carbohydrates.  We were the first to demonstrate the impact of low glycaemic diets on adipocyte metabolism.  More recently in partnership with Professor Jimmy Bell we have used an integrative physiological approach to investigate the role of dietary carbohydrates on body composition and appetite regulation. 

Short Chain Fatty Acids: These are products of microbial fermentation of dietary carbohydrate in the gastrointestinal track.  Our research program in partnership with the University of Glasgow has led to the new understanding of the role for these molecules in appetite regulation. 

Food Structure:  Over the last five years in partnership with colleagues at the Quadram Institute, John Innes Centre and the University of Glasgow we have had a major interest in how food structure influences human metabolism   

Obesity Management:  My group is part of the section of Division Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism which is headed by Professor Bloom where we have been part of the team that demonstrated the importance of a number of gut peptides in appetite regulation peptides in appetite regulation.  We also have an on going project investigating the role of nutrients in the secretion of appetite regulating peptides and a major interest in the basic nutritional physiology involved in energy balance.

Dietary intake:  One of the major nutritional challenges is the actuate assessment of food intake in free living people.  With Prof Holmes, Dr Garcia, Dr Posma and Prof Nicholson with had made a significant contribution by using metabolic profiling to improve dietary reporting.  Also with Prof Yang and Dr Lo we are developing new camera technology to improve dietary reporting

Nutrition in the Elderly:  My research group are interested in the relationship between food, the gastrointestinal tract and appetite regulation during aging.  Over recent years we have demonstrated that anorexic hormones released from the gut higher than in young people. 

Lesley Ann Gray, Strategic insight Director, Kantar Worldpanel

Lesley Ann Gray joined Kantar Worldpanel last year (June 2018) as its new strategic lead for Scotland.  With over 25 years’ experience in the Scottish food and drink industry Lesley Ann has worked in roles across marketing, category management, new product development and in commercial positions for branded, licensed and own-label businesses, supplying retail and food service sectors.  Lesley Ann works across all food and drink categories in Scotland as part of the client service team.

Dr Graham Horgan

Principal Consultant for Human Health & Nutrition

BioSS, Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Aberdeen

Dr Graham Horgan has 20 years experience of statistical research and consultancy working with scientists involved in nutritional, health, environmental and agricultural research. He has worked for BioSS since 1988 and been Head of the BioSS group at the Rowett Institute since 1997. He has established fruitful collaborative links throughout the Rowett Institute and been involved in the statistical analysis of data collected from a wide range of projects from epidemiological studies at a population level to high dimensional molecular data collected in the laboratory. He has also done contract statistical work for a variety of public and commercial organisations, including the UK Food Standards Agency.  This has included collaboration with work on EU funded projects such as NuGO and Diogenes. His work has included statistical methodological development which has led to over 25 first-author papers in the scientific literature, as well as many more where his statistical involvement has led to co-authorship. He has coordinated the BioSS programme of training courses since 1988, and been a presenter on many of these.

Dr Janet Kyle

Janet graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a BSc (Hons) in Food Science and microbiology, then gained a MSc(Med sci) in Human Nutrition from the University of Glasgow. After graduating she spent 7 years working as a research assistant, at the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen on a series of Food Standards Agency and EU human intervention and supplementation projects investigating the uptake and potential antioxidant/oxidant effects of flavonoids and selenium on human health. During this time she completed her PhD at the University of Aberdeen which focussed on dietary flavonoid intake and colorectal cancer risk. On completing her PhD she undertook a Marie Curie Industrial Research Fellowship based at Unilever R&D, Vlaardingen in the Netherlands. In 2005 she returned to Aberdeen to join the Public Health Nutrition Research Group as a Research Fellow in nutrition and to manage the Scottish Collaborative Group Food Frequency Questionnaire service.

In 2011 she moved into lecturing co-ordinating post graduate courses as part of the International Health & Management and Global Health programmes, before returning to nutrition and her current position as programme co-ordinator for the MSc in Human Nutrition in February 2013.

Heather is a multidisciplinary social scientist whose formal training spans law, French language, forensic medicine, philosophy, gender studies, social research, sociology, criminology and health services research. She was appointed as a Lecturer within the University of Aberdeen’s Postgraduate Education Group, Institute of Applied Health Sciences on 01 October 2017. She previously worked at the Chief Scientist Office-funded Health Services Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, from February 2012 to September 2017.

Heather has substantive research interests in digital health, methodological expertise in designing, leading and delivering qualitative and mixed methods studies and a pedagogical research focus on postgraduate training and employment, within and beyond universities.

Heather’s current digital health research explores people's uses and experiences of various personal health self-monitoring technologies within and independently of health and social care services, including nutrition tracking for dietary assessment in research and as a behaviour change intervention.

Alex Rowberry – Consumer Insight Director, Kantar Worldpanel Nutrition

10 years’ experience working in market research

The last 2 years working in the Kantar Worldpanel Nutrition team delivering projects to government agencies, industry bodies, manufacturers and retailers in the UK food and drink industry. Before that 8 years working in the Kantar Worldpanel Telecoms team, delivering projects to mobile phone networks, broadband providers, handset manufacturers and mobile retailers.

Dr Stephen Whybrow

Research Fellow

University of Aberdeen

Dr Stephen Whybrow’s PhD focussed on lifestyle interventions relating to diet modification and obesity and was conducted at the Rowett Institute.  His subsequent research included dietary assessment ranging from small, intensive laboratory studies and a commercial weight-loss company to longer-term interventions involving multiple dietary records from around 1000 subjects. The latter involved harmonization and management of food and nutrient databases, and data entry and analysis, from across the eight Europe-wide participating countries.

Whilst at the Rowett, he was also involved in assessing and modelling the mis-reporting of dietary intakes as a prelude to the accurate modelling of the dietary and phenotypic determinants of energy balance.

Current research interests include the effect of minimum unit alcohol pricing on food purchasing in the Kantar Worldpanel purchase data, and exploring how to nudge the population towards healthier and more environmentally sustainable diets.