About the Editors

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, 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, 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

Marilyn Cornelis, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, USA

Marilyn Cornelis PhD is an Associate Professor of Preventative Medicine (Nutrition) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL. Marilyn graduated with her PhD from the University of Toronto, Canada in 2006, before receiving her Postdoctoral Fellow from Havard School of Public Health, nutrition and genetic epidemiology in 2010.

Dr Conelis' research aims to couple modern high-throughput omic technologies to traditional clinical and epidemiological methods to enhance biological understanding of how diet and nutrition contributes to chronic disease. She has a special interest in the genetics of coffee consumption, caffeine metabolism, taste preferences and other dietary behaviors. She is a member of a number of professional societies, as well being on scientific advisory and editorial boards. Marilyn has also been awarded a number of honors: Proctor and Gamble Graduate Student Oral Competition Finalist, American Society for Nutritional Sciences (2004), and The Roger R. Williams Award for Genetic Epidemiology and the Prevention & Treatment of Atheroscleros, American Heart Association (2009).

Eileen Gibney, University College Dublin, Ireland

Expertise: Personalised nutrition, dietary intake assessment, dietary intake data, metabolism, malnutrition

Associate Prof Eileen Gibney (BSc, PhD, MSc) has worked in the area of human nutrition since 1997. Graduating with a degree in human nutrition from Ulster University, she then obtained her PhD from the Dunn Nutrition Unit, University of Cambridge in 2001. She went on to complete an MSc in Molecular Medicine (TCD) in 2003. Eileen held post-doctoral positions at the University of Newcastle and Trinity College Dublin, before joining UCD as Lecturer in Nutrition in 2005. Her current research interests lie in the area of personalised nutrition, where she investigates response, including inter-individual variation in response to nutrition interventions, and develops strategies and innovative technologies for personalised dietary and lifestyle feedback. Eileen has been/is a PI on many national and international projects including; food4me, Food for Health Ireland, Insight II and FNS-Cloud. She is a Deputy Director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health and a member of the academic staff for the BSc Human Nutrition. She was Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning for the School of Agriculture and Food Science from 2015-2019, and is currently the Director of Executive Education. Eileen was a Director of the Irish Association for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (IrSPEN) from 2010 to 2019. She is currently a Trustee of the Nutrition Society of UK and Ireland. She sits on the Public Health Nutrition sub Committee in the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.

Jennifer Miles-Chan, University of Auckland, New Zealand

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.

Anoop Misra, Fortis-CDOC Center of Excellence for Diates, Metabolic Diseases and Endocrinolgy, India

Expertise: Obesity & body composition in Asian Indians/South Asians; Nutrition strategies for weight loss & glycemic control in Asian Indians/South Asians; T2DM in South Asians/developing countries; Non-alcoholic fatty liver and fatty pancreas

Anoop Misra is presently Chairman, Fortis-CDOC Center of Excellence for Diabetes, Metabolic Diseases, and Endocrinology, New Delhi, and Director, National Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation, and Diabetes Foundation (India). He has received training at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India, Royal Free Hospital in London, UK and at Department of Medicine and Endocrinology at Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Texas, USA. He has been advisory board member of National Program for Cancer, Diabetes, and CVD, India and has been member, Working Groups on obesity, nutrition and diabetes for Indian Council of Medical Research, National Institute of Nutrition, National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (India) and the WHO. He has published more than 300 scientific papers in the National and International journals. Prof. Misra has several important scientific findings to his credit; he has lead countrywide consensus guidelines for obesity, the metabolic syndrome, physical activity, diets, and management of diabetes for Asian Indians. Dr Misra has been Awarded highest award for medicine in India Dr BC Roy award (2006) and prestigious National Honor, Padma Shree (2007). He has given 30 named orations in India and neighboring countries.

Rebecca Kuriyan Raj, 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.

Mario Siervo, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

Expertise: Obesity; Sarcopenia; Nitric Oxide; Endothelial Function; Global Health

Mario is a clinician specialised in clinical nutrition and metabolic medicine at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy. He obtained an MSc in Public Health Nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a PhD in Human Physiology and Nutrition at the University of Cambridge. He has been awarded two prestigious prizes for his contribution to nutrition research by the British Nutrition Foundation in 2013 and by the UK Nutrition Society in 2017. He has published more than 160 publications, contributed to three book chapters and co-edited two books. His research interests are in defining the role of sarcopenic obesity as a diagnostic entity and improve disease risk prediction. His other line of research investigates the role of dietary nitrate to modify nitric oxide production and impact on physiological outcomes. He has developed non-invasive, stable isotopic methods for the assessment of nitric oxide production in humans and lead a lab specialised in the determination of biomarkers of nitric oxide production using ozone-based chemiluminescence, GCMS and immunoassays.

Thomas MS Wolever, University of Toronto, Canada

Expertise: Whole body human metabolism; Dietary carbohydrates in relation to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease; Insulin resistance / beta-cell dysfunction; Diabetes; Blood lipids

Thomas MS Wolever, obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Oxford University, UK in 1980, a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Toronto in 1986 and a Doctorate in Medicine from Oxford University in 1993. My current position is Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto. I have the following cross appointments: Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto; Scientist, Keenan Research Centre of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto; Member, Active Medical Staff, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto; and Member, Consulting Medical Staff, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto. My research interests are the effects of dietary carbohydrates on human physiology and metabolism. I am, perhaps, most well-known for my work on the glycaemic index which was as first developed by Dr. David Jenkins and me, along with other collaborators, while I was a medical student. I have written or co-authored over 300 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and also authored a book entitled: The Glycaemic Index: A Physiological Classification of Dietary Carbohydrate published in 2006 by CABI (www.cabi.org). In 1997 I founded GI Testing, Inc. to provide confidential GI testing services to industry. To cope with the high demand for GI testing and to enable a wider range of clinical research services to be provided, Glycemic Index Laboratories, Inc. (www.gilabs.com) was formed in 2004; a corporation of which I am President. More important than anything else, I am married with 3 children aged 26, 24 and 17 years. I enjoy orienteering, cycling and recorder playing.

Shankuan Zhu, Zhejiang University, China

Expertise: Obesity and its related chronic diseases mechanism, risk factor, screening, diagnostic standard, and prevention

Dr. Zhu is a Qiushi Professor at Zhejiang University, China Medical Board (CMB) Distinguished Professor, a Professor at Women’s Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and a Professor at the University of Toronto (Status Only). He is the Founding Director of Chronic Disease Research Institute, and the Chair of Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene at Zhejiang University School of Public Health. He is also the Founding Director of Obesity and Body Composition Research Center at Zhejiang University School of Medicine. Dr. Zhu served as Executive Dean and Vice Dean of Zhejiang University School of Public Health from 2009 to 2017.

Dr. Zhu graduated from Nagoya University School of Medicine, Japan, and obtained PhD in 1997, he was an Assistant Professor at Nagoya University from 1997 to 2000. From 2000 to 2003, Dr. Zhu received Post-doctoral training at Obesity Research Center of Human Nutrition Institute at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) from 2003 to 2007 at Medical College of Wisconsin and Adjunct Associate Professor from 2008 to 2010. Dr. Zhu received US China Medical Board (CMB) Distinguished Professorship Award in 2009, University Silver Medal from Heidelberg University in 2012, and the Most Cited Chinese Researchers in Medicine (Elsevier) in 2014 to 2018.

Statistical Editors

Paola Ferrario, 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, 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.

Shahid Ullah, 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, 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.

Social Media Editor

Li Kheng Chai, 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.