About the Editors
Editor-in-Chief
Mario J Soares, MBBS, MSc , PhD, Curtin University, Australia
Expertise: Obesity; T2DM; energy and protein metabolism; weight loss
Mario J Soares is a physician-scientist with a formal grounding in human nutrition and physiology. He has an adjunct Associate Professor appointment at Curtin University, Perth, Australia with a cross appointment as Adjunct Professor, St. John's Research Institute, Bangalore, India. His current research focuses on calcium and vitamin D in obesity and T2DM. He has served the Nutrition Society of Australia as Chairperson of its Perth Chapter and also was the Director, Research Training of the School of Public Health, Curtin University.
Deputy Editors
Claudio Maffeis, PhD, University of Verona, Italy
Expertise: Obesity and its complications in children and adolescents; Energy and nutrient metabolism; Diabetes mellitus in pediatrics
Current Director of the Complex Operative Unit of Pediatric Diabetology, Clinical Nutrition, and Obesity, and the Regional Center for Pediatric Diabetes, University of Verona. Claudio Maffeis' research interests lie in child nutrition and diabetes. In particular, he focused his research on the energy expenditure and nutrient metabolism in obese children as well as on the epidemiology and risk factors of childhood obesity. He coordinated research projects of national interest and published more than 170 peer-reviewed original research papers, including reviews and book chapters, and is currently Associate Editor of Pediatric Obesity. He is a member of the Commission on Dietetic and Nutrition of the Italian Ministry of Health. He is serving in the Board of The Italian Society of Obesity and the Italian Society of Preventive and Social Pediatrics.
Manuela Merli, PhD, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Expertise: nutrition, body composition, energy and nutrient metabolism in patients with chronic liver diseases. Nutritional education
Prof Manuela Merli is presently Associated Professor at the Gastroenterology and Hepatology Division, Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. President of the School of Medicine B at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Deputy director in the Postgraduate School of Gastroenterology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Teaching at residents, students, nurses and dietitians. Main research lines of Prof Merli are in the field of liver cirrhosis and liver transplantation with particular focus on nutrition and metabolism. In these fields she has been invited speaker in national and international Congress. She is member of the European Society of Liver Diseases (EASL) working in the Educational Comitee. She is honorary member of the European Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. She coordinate and participate in the guidelines for nutrition in Liver disease for both these societies. She is now in charge of an EASL project for on line education on nutrition. Prof Merli published 243 original articles in international peer reviewed journal and 38 book chapters in the field of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (Scopus July 2020- 10485 citations ; H-index 55).
Associate Editors
Emilie Combet, BSc (Hons) PhD, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
Expertise: Nutrition, lifecourse, weight management and obesity-mediated diseases, analytical biochemistry, micronutrient status
Emilie Combet is a professor of human nutrition at the University of Glasgow, where she leads a research team investigating the impact of diet on health and disease. Her research focuses on the nutritional and environmental quality of foods and their impact on human health, with a particular interest in obesity and weight management, and how diet and dietary choices influence healthspan. She has an interest in iodine and thyroid function, and phytochemicals and gut function, including work studying bioavailability and impact on human health over short, medium and long term. Her work also explores how the food industry can contribute to reducing the risk of chronic diseases through food reformulation.
Alberto Dávalos, PhD IMDEA Food Institute, CIBER de Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutrición (CIBEROBN), Madrid, Spain
Expertise: Precision nutrition, non-coding RNAs, extracellular vesicles, epigenetics, miRNAs, Lipid metabolism, food bioactive compounds, dietary polyphenols.
Dr. Alberto Dávalos is head of the Laboratory of Epigenetics of Lipid Metabolism at IMDEA Food Institute. His main research program focuses in identifying new therapeutic strategies through modulating noncoding RNAs and extracellular vesicle levels by diet or other lifestyle factors to treat metabolic diseases; and to understand lifestyle modification of the epigenome and personalize the health of individuals using epigenetics (particularly noncoding RNAs) for the development of Precision Nutrition. He uses in vitro models, including organoids and organ-on-chip, as well as pre-clinical models, including rodents and non-human primates, to decipher novel interactions of diet and lifestyle factors with our epigenome. He also conducts clinical trials to incorporate epigenetic information into precision nutrition approaches.
Rebecca Kuriyan Raj, MSC, PhD, St John's Research Institute, India
Expertise: Body composition, Energy expenditure, Childhood obesity, Clinical nutrition, Public health nutrition, Overweight & Obesity
Professor Rebecca Kuriyan Raj (PhD) is Head, Division of Nutrition, St. John’s Research Institute, Bangalore, India. Her research interests include measuring body composition across the life cycle, energy expenditure and prevention of overweight/obesity. Currently her research involves longitudinal measurements of body composition in infants at birth and in the early years of life. She, along with her colleagues have built a state of art whole body potassium counter for estimating body cell mass in humans. This facility, the first in Asia, is being used to address many important research issues in clinical research and public health. She has established a cohort of urban school children and measured body composition. She is actively involved in training and mentoring students and has been the course director for a 2-week short term course in International Nutrition Research Methods since 2010, which is a part of the Bangalore Boston Nutrition Collaborative (BBNC) between St. John’s Research Institute (SJRI), Harvard T S Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and Tufts University. This course has been held annually since 2010 and has trained over 500 students across different countries. She has published 95 research papers and authored a book on Nutrition in Obesity and Diabetes.
Jennifer L. Miles-Chan, PhD, MSc , BSc, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Expertise: Energy balance & Body composition/Nutritional Physiology.
Jennifer Miles-Chan is Director of the Human Nutrition Unit at the University of Auckland, Australasia’s only long stay residential nutrition facility with the capability of conducting diet-controlled interventions in order to demonstrate cause and effect relationships between diet, health and disease. Jennifer is an integrative physiologist whose research is focused on nutritional energetics and the regulation of body composition. Her experience covers a diverse range of settings: including a solid background in pre-clinical models and molecular analyses, clinical intervention studies, and experience in more epidemiological-type investigations. Jennifer’s current research is focused on two broad areas: (i) deciphering inter-individual variability in energy balance, and how this relates to inequities in our risk for metabolic disease; and (ii) prevention and treatment of metabolic disease in “at risk” population groups, including overweight and obesity, metabolic dysregulation, and type 2 diabetes – in other words, identifying why some of us are more susceptible to obesity and metabolic disease than others, and how we might be able to tailor prevention and treatment strategies accordingly.
Masashi Miyashita, PhD, Waseda University, Japan
Expertise: Exercise metabolism; Postprandial metabolism; Exercise nutrition; Mastication
Masashi Miyashita is Professor of Exercise Metabolism in the Faculty of Sport Sciences at Waseda University, Japan, where he has worked in a variety of roles including international exchanges and promotion since 2016. Masashi has researched areas relating to physical activity, nutrition and health for over 18 years, beginning with his PhD research (supervised by Professor David Stensel, Loughborough University, UK) which examined exercise and postprandial lipid metabolism. More specifically, Masashi research interests are in the physiology and nutrition of physical activity and health with an interest in both the basic science of physical activity/nutrition and the applied aspects that relate to health in physical activity and nutrition. Much of his research activities have examined the effects of physical activity/diet on risk factors for cardiovascular disease and the effects of exercise/diet on appetite and energy intake in humans. In addition to Masashi’s position at Waseda University, he is Visiting Fellow in Exercise Metabolism at Loughborough University, UK and Senior Research Fellow at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Masashi also acts as an Editorial Board Member for the International Journal of Obesity (since 2022) and the Journal of Exercise Science and Fitness (since 2018), and is an Executive Board Member of the Asian Nutrition Society for Sport and Health (since 2022) and the Japanese Society of Physical Fitness and Sports Medicine (since 2023).
Diego Moretti, Dr.sc.nat (PhD), Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
Expertise: nutrition of sensitive populations (women and children), micronutrient nutrition (iron, iodine, zinc), food science, nutrition, biology, and human physiology.
Since January 2023 Diego Moretti is professor of Nutrition, Bioavailability, and Food Science at SUPSI (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland). In 2020 he has been awarded by SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) a Practice to Science Professorship. From 2013 to 2018, he worked as a senior researcher and lecturer at the Laboratory of Human Nutrition at ETH Zurich, and since September 2018, he has been the head of research in Nutrition and Dietetics at SUPSI/FFHS, the Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences, which is part of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland.
Diego studied Food Science at ETH Zurich (2002) and completed a doctorate on iron fortification of rice (2006), under the supervision of Prof. Richard Hurrell and Prof. Michael Zimmermann. He worked as a nutrition scientist for Unilever R&D in Vlaardingen, Netherlands and as a Postdoc at Wageninen University in the Netherlands. His research interests focus on the nutrition of sensitive populations (women and children) with a focus on micronutrient nutrition (iron, iodine, zinc), and are at the intersection of food science, nutrition, biology, and human physiology. He is a globally recognized expert in the use of stable isotopes to measure mineral bioavailability in humans. He was awarded the Nestlé Switzerland Science Prize (2016) for his work on iron supplements in young women, which led to the revision of practice guidelines.
Mary Phillips, BSc, RD, Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, UK
Expertise: hepato-pancreatic-biliary nutrition, pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and malabsorption, chronic pancreatitis
Mary Phillips is an Advanced Clinical Practitioner (Registered Dietitian) in the UK. She specialises in hepato-pancreatico-biliary nutrition, with special interests in pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and malabsorption. Her research interests lie in managing malabsorption, optimising the patient pathway and nutritional interventions in pancreatic disease, the nutritional management of acute and chronic pancreatitis.
Jolieke van der Pols, PhD, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Brisbane, Australia
Expertise: Nutrition, sustainable diets, epidemiology, clinical trials, cancer, food systems, food innovation, life cycle assessment, vitamin D, micronutrients
Professor Jolieke van der Pols is a nutrition scientist and epidemiologist who obtained her MSc degree in Human Nutrition from Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and her PhD from Cambridge University, UK. Most of her research to date has focused on the role of nutrients (vitamin D, folate), foods (dairy foods in particular) and dietary patterns in chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. She also has a strong interest in international nutrition issues, and has carried out research in West Africa, Egypt, and Vietnam. She has authored more than 120 peer reviewed journal articles. Her current research has a strong focus on sustainability issues relating to diets and food systems. She also has an active research interest in use of precision fermentation for food production. Areas of specific expertise include epidemiological methods, longitudinal data analysis, research trials, nutrition surveillance, micronutrients, environmental impacts relating to foods and food systems.
Statistical Editors
Paola G. Ferrario, PhD, Max Rubner-Institut, Germany
Dr. Paola G. Ferrario is a biostatistician at the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry of Nutrition at the Max Rubner-Institut (MRI), Germany. The MRI is the Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food in Germany. Her recent research focuses on investigation and development of statistical methods with application in nutrition, physiology, metabolomics. She has been involved in the statistical study plan (concerning study design, sample size calculation, randomisation) and analysis of nutritional studies at the Study Centre for Human Nutrition of the MRI; she performs biostatistical consulting in her department, working together with bioinformaticians, nutritionists, chemists and physicians.
Before taking up her present position she was at the University Lubeck and the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. There, she worked on statistical analysis of genomics data in relation to cardiovascular diseases. She received her doctorate degree in mathematical statistics with focus on nonparametric approaches, local variance estimation and censored data from the University Stuttgart, Germany, while teaching statistics at the University Hohenheim. Her first publication received a nonparametric best student paper award. She was born in Italy, where she studied mathematical engineering (at the Polytechnic of Milano).
Christian Ritz, PhD, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Christian Ritz, MSc, PhD, is an Associate Professsor in statistics at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen. His research interests focus on statistical methodology linked to applications in nutrition, physiology, and toxicology, including dose-response analysis, mixed model methodology. Statistical computing is an integral part of this research. He has over 200 peer-reviewed publications; his methodological work has contributed to current understanding of some aspects of inference in mixed models. Also, his development of statistical software for dose-response analysis has been highly influential. He has been involved in most stages of design and analysis of both randomized controlled trials and observational studies.
Sumithra Selvam, MSc, St. John's Research Institute, Bangalore, India
Expertise: Statistical analysis of longitudinal data, Trajectory Analysis, Growth Mixture Modelling, Multilevel Modelling, Survival Analysis, Clinical and Public Health Research studies, Demography
Sumithra Selvam (PhD) works as a Senior Biostatistician, Division of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Population Health, St. John’s Research Institute (SJRI), Bangalore, India. Her work involves statistical analysis of longitudinal data which includes Trajectory Analysis, Growth Mixture Modelling, and Survival Analysis apart from Clinical Oriented Research and Public Health Research data. She has been a consultant for researchers on study design, sample size calculation, data analysis, reporting and interpretation of several longitudinal studies, interventional trials, laboratory experiments, validation studies conducted across India. She actively involves in reviewing case report forms developed and provides guidance on development and review of databases for multiple studies at St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences. Data management and analysis of several ongoing clinical and community trials and observational studies is handled by her. She has authored over 100 publications in both national and international journals. She has been a core faculty member in Theory and Practice of Epidemiology and Biostatistics workshop since 2004. She has is a core faculty member in the workshops on database development data cleaning and data quality. Her work also covers teaching of medical, nursing and hospital administration students.
Shahid Ullah, BSc, MSc , PhD, Flinders University, Australia
Dr Shahid Ullah is a Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics in the college of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University, Australia. Prior to this, he has held academic appointments in biostatistics at South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Federation University Australia and the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. His current research involves statistical and epidemiological methodology and modelling, joint modelling approach for survival and longitudinal data, machine learning, geospatial analysis, and functional data analysis for time series forecasting. Dr Ullah has been successful in his previous research and he brings an excellent skill for collaboration and consultancies with leading researchers and scientists through actively involved statistical modelling and methodology as well as facilitating teaching and contributing to research. He supervises honors, master and PhD students. He publishes in top ranking journals. His research activities have been disseminated in 101 peer reviewed publications and awarded over $1.2 million in collaborative research grants as the named Associate and Chief investigators. Dr Ullah is happy to collaborate with clinical and public health researchers across a range of fields within medicine and public health discipline and can be contacted by shahid.ullah@flinders.edu.au.
Richard Woodman, PhD, M.Med.Sci, M.Biostatistics, BSc, Flinders University, Australia
Richard Woodman holds a balanced academic position at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, performing biostatistical consulting, independent research and teaching to undergraduate, postgraduate and MD students. He is currently the director of the Flinders Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Recently he has provided a lead role in establishing the methodology for the reporting of standardised in-hospital mortality ratios across Australia with the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in HealthCare (ACSQHC), the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and the National Health Performance Authority. His work covers a broad range study designs and methodology including those used in clinical trials and observational studies, and he has authored more than 180 peer reviewed journal articles. He is also a former president of the South Australian branch of the Statistical Society of Australia (SSA) and current Council member.
Di Wu, PhD, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA
Di Wu, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Biostatistics, Gillings School of Public Health, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA. Her expertise includes developing statistical bioinformatic methods to better analyze large scale of biomedical (oral, cancer, autoimmune diseases among others), electronic health records (EHR) and genomics data including single cell and spatial omics data and microbiome sequencing data. She also has expertise in data integration of multiple levels/modalities of data. She has developed gene set testing methods for bulk RNASeq and single cell RNAseq data (ROAST, CAMERA, Two-Sigma-G and a method for time course data). Her recent work includes development of statistical, machine learning and deep learning methods of metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolome and longitudinal data.
Social Media Editor
Li Kheng Chai, PhD, BSc, Australia
Li is a Dietitian and Research Fellow at Health and Wellbeing Queensland, and Visiting Fellow at Queensland University of Technology. She has sought experience from a variety of disciplines including clinical dietetics, nutrition research, community health promotion and education, and undergraduate teaching and supervision. Li is a strong advocate for children’s health and nutrition. Her current research interests lie in the fields of obesity, one of the primary modifiable risk factors for chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and stroke. Her research focuses on using technology to develop, deliver and evaluate nutrition and lifestyle interventions to improve population health and diet quality.