Committees

John is Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at the University of Nottingham. He teaches aspects of nutrition, endocrinology and metabolism on various degrees, including BSc Nutrition, BSc Animal Science, MSc Nutritional Sciences and MSc Animal Nutrition. 

John's research interests fall into three broad areas: molecular nutrition, development of body composition and regulation of energy balance.

Current and recent research projects include:

• Regulation of tissue (muscle, fat and liver) growth and metabolism, combining metabolomics, transcriptomics and systems biology.

• Effects of vitamin D on muscle cell growth, metabolism and gene expression.

• Novel regulators of energy expenditure and appetite.

• Novel Protein sources and gut digestibility.

John is an experienced author and has co-written over 80 papers relating to animal and human nutrition.

Wendy Hall, BA (Hons), MSc, PhD, RNutr, is a Professor of Nutritional Sciences within the Department of Nutritional Sciences at King’s College London. She completed her PhD (2001) on amino acids and appetite regulation at the University of Surrey where she stayed for another 2 years to research vitamin E metabolism. Following 3 years as a postdoctoral researcher at University of Reading, working on cardiometabolic effects of soy isoflavones and unsaturated fatty acids, Wendy was appointed to an academic post at King’s College London in 2005.

Wendy’s research utilises clinical trials and observational study designs to investigate cardiometabolic disease risk and related conditions such as inflammatory skin disorders, as well as sleep-diet interactions and health. Ongoing projects include investigation of diet-health associations in menopause; comparisons of fatty acids effects on cardiovascular health outcomes; a potassium-rich dietary intervention to investigate effects on sleep quality, nocturnal glycaemia and blood pressure; a Mediterranean dietary intervention in people living with psoriasis; and investigations into associations between diet and psoriasis severity/incidence using the UK Biobank database. Wendy has authored >100peer-reviewed publications and was awarded the Nutrition Society’s Silver Medal in 2016.

Wendy served as NS Theme Lead for Whole Body Metabolism/Nutrition and Optimum Life Course from 2018 to 2023. She is Deputy Editor for British Journal of Nutrition and section editor for European Journal of Nutrition, and sits on the editorial board for the Nutrition Bulletin. She is a founder member of the NS Workplace Diet and Health Nutrition Society Special Interest Group.

Dr Oonagh Markey (BSc (Hons), PhD, RNutr) is a Senior Lecturer in Nutritional Sciences within the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading.

She was awarded her PhD in Nutrition and Physiology from the University of Limerick, Ireland in 2012. Shortly after the completion of her PhD, Dr Markey was appointed as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Reading’s Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition (2012-2016). On completion of her post-doctoral training, she took up her first independent research position as Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellow at Loughborough University for 5 years. She has been a Registered Nutritionist (Nutrition Science) with the Association for Nutrition since 2014.

Dr Markey's research focuses primarily on dietary strategies for promotion of cardiometabolic health across the lifecourse, with emphasis on vascular function, lipid metabolism, and inflammation. She has conducted human dietary intervention studies (from acute, single meal investigations to longer-term dietary manipulation) in apparently healthy and ‘at risk’ populations. Her research programme aims to provide scientific evidence relevant to public policy for cardiovascular disease prevention and the food industry.

Dr Christian Reynolds is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London; and is the Senior Tutor for Research at the Centre for Food Policy.

Dr. Emma Feeney is a Lecturer / Assistant Professor in UCD’s Institute of Food and Health, where she co-ordinates modules in Human eating behaviour, Food Ingredients, and Sensory science, and was recently nominated for a Teaching and Learning Award at UCD in recognition of her teaching practice.

With a background in Genetics, Human Nutrition, and Sensory Science, Emma’s research interests and publications span a range of aspects including sensory evaluation, taste and appetite measurement, nutritional intake assessment, dairy food consumption, sodium reduction, food bioactives, and food structure.  She has overseen human intervention studies in a number of clinical and research settings, and has experience in dietary assessment of both children and adults, presenting her research at numerous national and international conferences.

In addition to her teaching and research commitments, Emma is an Associate Editor at BMC Nutrition, and a First Editor at the British Journal of Nutrition.  

Dr Alexandra Mavroeidi, is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Activity for Health. She has worked in the field of nutrition, exercise/sedentary behaviour, and bone health for the past 22 years. She had been involved in several studies looking at the relative contributions of sunlight, diet, and physical activity on vitamin D status in women living in the north of the UK.

She became a state registered dietitian in 2000 and moved to Aberdeen the following year to undertake her MSc in Sports Nutrition. In 2002, she joined the Osteoporosis Research Unit and carried out her PhD looking at the effect of habitual physical activity on the bone mass of older postmenopausal women. She stayed in Aberdeen as a Lecturer in Exercise/Human Physiology at the University of Aberdeen until 2015.

In 2015 she relocated to Glasgow due to family circumstances, where she undertook a 1-year lecturing position with the University of Glasgow as the level 3 BSc (Hons) Physiology co-ordinator. In 2016 she joined the Ageing Well Research Group at the Glasgow Caledonian University as a Research Fellow.

In 2018 she joined the Physical Activity for Health Group at Strathclyde University, as a Senior Lecturer. She is an active member of several professional societies including the Royal Osteoporosis Society, American Society of Bone and Mineral Research and American College of Sports Medicine. She was part of the scientific panels reviewing the vitamin D clinical guidelines on behalf of the Royal Osteoporosis Society (2019), and updated the current CMO’s UK Physical Activity Guidelines for Older Adults (2019). She has been a committee member of the Scottish Section of the Nutrition Society since 2017, and as Secretary since 2022.

In 2023, Alex moved back to Glasgow Caledonian University to assume the role of Head of Department for Occupational Health and Nutrition & Dietetics. 

Tom Hill is Professor of Nutrition at Newcastle University. His research and teaching specialisms fall under four broad areas: nutrition in very-old age, micronutrients and health, food and health and biofortification strategies. Ongoing RCUK funded projects include:

• Diet and health in 85+ year-olds (The Newcastle 85+ Cohort Study)
• Egg enrichment with vitamin D (The Sunshine Eggs projects)
• The nutritional profile of vertically grown crops (The Infarm2.x project)
• Nutrition and healthy brain ageing (The NuBrain project)

Tom served on the editorial board of the British Journal of Nutrition and the Journal of Nutritional Sciences from 2012-2018 and is currently an editorial board member for Nutrition Research Reviews.  He was membership secretary of the Nutrition Society, Irish section from 2006-2011 and was the local organiser of the Societies’ 70th anniversary meeting, jointly hosted with the American Society for Nutrition which was held in Cork in 2011. He is one of four editors of the Nutrition Society, Introduction to Human Nutrition third edition textbook. 

Dr Lisa Coneyworth (BSc (Hons), PhD, RNutr) is an Associate Professor within the Division of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Nottingham, UK. 

After completing her BSc (Hons) Food and Human Nutrition and PhD in Molecular Nutrition at Newcastle University, Lisa completed a period of post-doctoral research at the University of Nottingham before joining the Division of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics as a lecturer in 2012.  Lisa is an Association for Nutrition Registered Nutritionist - Nutrition Science (RNutr).

Lisa is Course Director for the MSc Nutritional Science programme at the University of Nottingham and teaches across the suite of nutrition related undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes offered. She is the Deputy Director of Education and Student Experience in the School of Biosciences and Faculty of Science Curriculum Transformation Programme Lead.

Lisa's research focuses on micronutrient nutrition, sustainable diets and food insecurity.  More specifically the prevalence, causes and impact of micronutrient deficiencies on individuals following restricted diets either due to choice such as veganism, vegetarianism or sustainability concerns, or due to imposed dietary restrictions as a consequence of food insecurity. 

Mary Ward graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BSc Hons in Human Nutrition and Dietetics. She is a registered dietitian and a Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the Nutrition Innovation Centre for Food and Health (NICHE), within the School of Biomedical Sciences at Ulster University, Northern Ireland where she has been involved in educating food, nutrition and dietetics students at undergraduate and postgraduate level for >25 years. Her research is focused on micronutrients, with a particular interest in the B-vitamins involved in one-carbon metabolism and their role in disease prevention from early life through to older age. She is also interested in the health impacts (including impact on micronutrient status) of transitioning to healthy diets from sustainable sources and is part of the All-Island Food Integrity Initiative which includes key stakeholders from academia, government and Industry from across the island of Ireland.

She leads an active research program at Ulster, where she heads up the Nutrition and Cardiovascular Unit and has vast experience of leading human trials in healthy and patient cohorts. She has published extensively in top-ranked international journals across several disciplines and has attracted significant external funding to support her research. She is committed to mentoring early career researchers and has supervised 25 PhD candidates to successful completion.

Mary has been a member of the Nutrition Society for almost 30 years, having served as an ordinary committee member as well as membership secretary and Chair of the Irish Section prior to her current role as President. External to Ulster sits on the Scientific Committee of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, is Deputy Director of the Wellcome Trust-Wolfson Northern Ireland Clinical Research Facility and is a member of the Life and Health sciences committee of the Royal Irish Academy.

Cassandra is responsible for the Society's academic publications, the scientific programmes portfolio and scientific and external ensuring an integrated approach across the Society’s activities. She contributes to the Society’s strategic and operational planning, being a member of the senior management team. 

Mark Hollingsworth is Chief Executive Officer and Company Secretary of The Nutrition Society and its subsidiary Trading Company. He is responsible for managing the affairs of the Society for the benefit of members at the direction of the Trustee Board. 

Jade is responsible for developing and managing the Society's scientific progammes, including the Training Academy's programme and the annual conference portfolio.

Andrea manages the Society's Conference portfolio. 

Associate Professor 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). Eileen held post-doctoral positions at the University of Newcastle and Trinity College Dublin, before joining UCD Nutrition in 2005. Her current research interests lie in the area of personalised nutrition, where she develops strategies and innovative technologies for personalised dietary and lifestyle feedback based on dietary, phenotypic and genetic information of the individual. She also conducts human intervention studies to examine the impact of consumption of food and food bioactives on markers of health.

She is a Deputy Director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health and a member of the academic staff for BSc Human Nutrition and several other programmes. 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 sat on the Board of the Irish Association for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (IrSPEN) from 2010-2019, and currently sits on the Public Health Nutrition sub Committee in the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.

Eileen joins the Nutrition Society as Trustee without Portfolio, where Eileen will support the Societies ongoing activities. Eileen has been a member of the Society since about 1997, when she was an undergraduate. Since then she has maintained an active engagement with the Society taking on several roles including serving on the Irish Section committee as an ordinary member and subsequently as Secretary. She has also served as Editor of the Nutrition Society Gazette and more recently, as Honorary Officer without Portfolio.

Dr. Domenico Azzolino obtained his PhD in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Milan (Milan, Italy). He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda - Policlinic Hospital of Milan (University Hospital).  He previously worked as a PostDoc at the Department of Clinical Sciences and Community Health of the University of Milan. His main research interest is on nutrition in older people, in particular how diet may promote healthy ageing and prevent age-associated conditions (e.g., sarcopenia, frailty, geriatric syndromes). Currently, his focus is conducting research on the role played by nutrition as a mediator of the fatigue symptom in older persons. Dr. Azzolino is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Frailty & Aging and participates in the activities of the International Conference on Frailty and Sarcopenia Research (ICFSR) Task Force. Dr. Azzolino is Associate Editor for the journal Frontiers in Oral Health (section Cardiometabolic Health) and is involved in several collaborative research projects funded by private and public agencies.

Alison is responsible for managing all of the membership activities, including supporting the members and maintaining and developing the membership experience.

Karen is a Registered Public Health Nutritionist, Senior Lecturer, and Subject Lead for the Food Science, Nutrition, and Wellbeing Programmes at Abertay University, where she has worked since 2015. Before this, she was a research nutritionist at the Centre for Public Health Nutrition Research, University of Dundee, for 16 years, where she completed her PhD.

Karen's PhD research, “An exploratory analysis of the Scottish Diet 2001-2009 using Household Purchase Data” continued to be the main focus of her research for several years, and my current research remains focused on public health nutrition.  I am interested in food choice, disease prevention through diet and lifestyle intervention, and food and nutrition policy.  As a member of the Scottish Government Cross Party Group on Food, Karen is involved in contributing to policy development on food issues in Scotland and is currently a member of the Technical Working Group for the Review of the Scottish Dietary Goals. Karen is also an External Examiner for Glasgow Caledonian University, a peer reviewer for grant applications and technical reports for Food Standards Scotland, a reviewer for several nutrition-related journals, and a STEM Ambassador. She has been a member of the Nutrition Society for some years and has previously been a member of the Scottish Section Committee.

Mark Hollingsworth is Chief Executive Officer and Company Secretary of The Nutrition Society and its subsidiary Trading Company. He is responsible for managing the affairs of the Society for the benefit of members at the direction of the Trustee Board. 

To follow

Luwam assists the Membership Manager in the day to day administration of the membership department of the Society, liaising with members, resolving any issues that arise in the process of members joining and renewing and ensuring that members have access to their benefits. Many of these tasks require work on the database to ensure that the members data held is accurate and up-to-date, and that information is there for other members of the team to utilise.

Dr. Ei Mon Phyo is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Health Science at the  Science and Tech International University in Myanmar.  She is also a registered nutritionist with the Association for Nutrition ,UK. Ei Mon graduated with an MBBS degree from the University of Medicine in Yangon, a Masters of Medical Science in Clinical Nutrition from the University of Glasgow and a Masters in Health Science from the University of Maryland Baltimore. She has been teaching postgraduate students studying nutrition and dietetics and providing nutrition counselling, for nine years. Ei Mon also has years of experience in giving nutrition and food safety lectures to undergraduate medical students and public health masters students. She has a passion for clinical and public health nutrition, and is particularly interested in clinical research projects related to women’s health, maternal and children's nutrition, and obesity.

Hannah Theobald is Head of Nutrition at Quorn Foods, which is home to the alternative protein brands, Quorn and Cauldron.

She has a career spanning almost 20 years working in the food and pharmaceutical industries as well as the NGO sector, having worked at Waitrose, the British Nutrition Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), pladis and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) previously. Hannah has experience of nutrition research, product claims, communications, stakeholder engagement, employee wellbeing and strategy development at both the national and international level.

Hannah has both a BSc and PhD in nutrition from King’s College London and is a Registered Nutritionist with the Association for Nutrition. She also holds a Diploma in sports nutrition from the International Olympic Committee. In her spare time, she can often be found cycling or hiking in the Surrey Hills or on a plane heading to explore a new country and its food.

Dr. Fotini Tsofliou is a Principal Lecturer in Nutrition in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences at Bournemouth University and a Registered Nutritionist (Nutrition Science). After completing her BSc(Hons) Human Nutrition and Dietetics, she was awarded a full-time postgraduate scholarship from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation and completed her MSc(MedSci) in Human Nutrition, Clinical Nutrition Specialisation and PhD at the University of Glasgow. For her PhD, she worked on the effects of dietary and exercise interventions on leptin and appetite control in obese, normal-weight weight and trained individuals. Following this, she conducted postdoctoral research at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen in the Division of Obesity and Metabolic Health and worked on the effects of dietary supplementation with CLA and n-3 PUFA on obesity and ageing.

Fotini has extensive experience in delivering and leading innovative Nutrition and Eating Behaviour curricula in HE in the UK and internationally, with successful programme leadership at the undergraduate and postgraduate level in AfN accredited university courses for over 10 years. She has been an elected Council member and Trustee for the UK Association for Nutrition (AfN) that defines and advances standards of evidence-based practice across the field of nutrition and currently sits on the AfN registration committee.

Her research interests are related to the role of diet quality and physical activity in appetite and body weight regulation for obesity prevention and management. Fotini has explored adoption/adherence barriers and enablers to sustainable plant-based diets, particularly Mediterranean-style diets and related food components. She has led dietary intervention studies for metabolic and cognitive health with mixed methodology in middle aged and older adults, including hard-to-reach communities. Fotini is also a reviewer for several nutrition-related journals, a member of the editorial board of Nutrients, and an associate editor for BMJ Nutrition, Prevention, and Health. She has been a member of the Nutrition Society for some years since she was a novice PGR.

In 1999, Dr. Warren PhD, BSc (Hons), PGCHE, R.Anim.Sci achieved her primary degree in Animal Science from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, followed by her PhD in fatty acids in beef from the Faculty of Medical and Veterinary Sciences at the University of Bristol. She spent five years lecturing degree students in animal and equine science before moving to industry. She is a Senior Visiting Fellow at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, a trustee of the British Society of Animal Science, a qualified lecturer, a Cow Signals Trainer and a registered Animal Scientist. She has recently joined the FSA’s Animal Feed and Feed Additives Joint Expert Group. She currently works as a European Technical Manager for Ruminants and Horses for Alltech, involving initiating European research projects, as well as delivering nutritional education and technical sales support.

Mary Yannakoulia is a Professor of Nutrition and Eating Behaviour in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Harokopio University, Athens, Greece.

Her research interests are related to factors that influence human eating behavior, adherence to diet and lifestyle interventions, as well as the relationship between diet and aging/cognitive decline and the potential dietary factors associated with successful weight loss. She is particularly interested in the Mediterranean diet: she has collaborated with several research groups in Greece and other countries, in order to investigate how social and other lifestyle factors may affect adherence to the core features of this dietary pattern and the potential health benefits. In 2009 she received a Fulbright research award to study associations between diet and metabolic parameters in Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean populations. She has been the PI in 6 research projects with national or international funding in many others she has acted as co-PI or collaborator. Mary has co-authored >260 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals (> 7,000 citations; h-factor 43).

From 2013 to 2021, she was the Representative of Greece in the High Level Group for Nutrition and Physical Activity of the European Commission, whereas since 2017 Mary has been the President of the National (Greek) Nutrition Policy Committee. She is member of the Editorial board of Metabolism (Elsevier)

Currently vacant - please contact [email protected] if you would like to put yourself forward.

Professor of Human Nutrition at Queen’s University Belfast, Jayne  - MA Hons (Oxon), PhD FSB -  is part of the Centre for Public Health, within the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences. She is also Deputy Director of the Institute for Global Food Security, one of the University’s four global research institutes.

Professor Woodside specialises in the use of biomarkers to assess dietary intake, conducting controlled dietary interventions examining clinically relevant endpoints, and trials promoting long-term dietary change. Jayne’s ongoing research aims to determine the role of diet and lifestyle in the primary and secondary prevention of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, including intervention trials using whole food/whole diet approaches, and the development of interventions to promote behaviour change.

President from 2001 to 2004

Professor Mathers is Professor of Human Nutrition, Director of the Human Nutrition Research Centre and Director of the Centre for Healthier Lives in Newcastle University. He was an undergraduate in Newcastle and undertook his PhD and post-doctoral research in the University of Cambridge followed by a Research Fellow post in Edinburgh University before being appointed in Newcastle. His major research interests are in understanding how eating patterns influence risks of age-related diseases including heart disease, diabetes, dementia and bowel cancer. He uses genomic and epigenomics approaches to understand the mechanisms though which nutrition influences cell function and, ultimately, health.  

Professor Mathers has a long-term interest in developing and implementing large scale human intervention studies to improve healthy ageing (The LIVEWELL Programme), and to reduce the risk common age-related diseases including bowel cancer (The CAPP Studies) and dementia (MedEx-UK). He led the EU-funded Food4Me intervention study which used a web-based approach to deliver a personalised nutrition intervention across 7 European countries. 

Among his external roles, Professor Mathers was President of the Nutrition Society and served on numerous grants panels and other committees for the MRC, BBSRC, ESRC, World Cancer Research Fund and other research funders. He is a Trustee of the British Nutrition Foundation and of the Rank Prize Funds. Professor Mathers is Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Nutrition. 

My original training was in bacterial genomics and gene-regulation. After moving into cancer cell biology, I became particularly interested in the mechanisms by which nutrients, and specifically short-chain fatty acids, regulate cell death pathways and how these processes are distinct from the actions of chemotherapeutics. I was appointed to the role of lecturer in nutrition at Sheffield’s Human Nutrition Unit in 2002, and through this role I developed a wider understanding of nutrition research approaches. 

I joined The Human Nutrition Research Centre at Newcastle University in March 2021, continuing and expanding my focus in nutrition and cancer.

Professor Alison Gallagher is currently Head of Doctoral College (Coleraine/Magee) at Ulster University.

With over 90 peer-reviewed publications (h-index of 30), Alison contributes to the research conducted within the Nutrition Innovation Centre for Food and Health (NICHE) at Ulster. Her research interests resonate within the area of obesity and include development of risk factors for disease, low-energy/non-nutritive sweeteners and their potential impact on health, physical activity and health (including implementation of lifestyle interventions at key stages across the lifecycle).

After completing her BSc Hons Human Nutrition and PhD at Ulster, Alison worked as Research Fellow (University of Strathclyde), then Research Officer (Northern Ireland Young Hearts Project) before returning to Ulster as Lecturer in 1999; being promoted to Senior Lecturer and subsequently Professor of Public Health Nutrition. A Registered Nutritionist (Public Health), she was the first Fellow of the Association of Nutrition (FAfN) on the island of Ireland. Alison is a passionate advocate for the European Nutrition Leadership Platform (ENLP), having participated in the ENLP seminar in 1997 and being involved with this international leadership programme ever since, and is the current Chair/President of the ENLP Board (www.enlp.eu.com). Alison is also a member/Vice-chair of Northern Ireland Chest Heart Stroke Scientific (NICHS) Research Committee, expert member on the Scientific Advisory Panel on Sweeteners supported by the International Sweeteners Association (ISA), member/Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Nutrition Bulletin and a member of the UK Nutrition and Health Claims Committee (https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/uk-nutrition-and-health-claims-comm...).

An active member of the Nutrition Society, Alison Chaired the Scientific Committee for the Federation of Nutritional Sciences (FENS) 13th European Nutrition Conference (www.fens2019.org) and was appointed as Editor-in-Chief for Proceedings of the Nutrition Society in 2021.

Tom Hill is Professor of Nutrition at Newcastle University. His research and teaching specialisms fall under four broad areas: nutrition in very-old age, micronutrients and health, food and health and biofortification strategies. Ongoing RCUK funded projects include:

• Diet and health in 85+ year-olds (The Newcastle 85+ Cohort Study)
• Egg enrichment with vitamin D (The Sunshine Eggs projects)
• The nutritional profile of vertically grown crops (The Infarm2.x project)
• Nutrition and healthy brain ageing (The NuBrain project)

Tom served on the editorial board of the British Journal of Nutrition and the Journal of Nutritional Sciences from 2012-2018 and is currently an editorial board member for Nutrition Research Reviews.  He was membership secretary of the Nutrition Society, Irish section from 2006-2011 and was the local organiser of the Societies’ 70th anniversary meeting, jointly hosted with the American Society for Nutrition which was held in Cork in 2011. He is one of four editors of the Nutrition Society, Introduction to Human Nutrition third edition textbook. 

M. Andrea Azcarate-Peril, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of Medicine, GI Division in the School of Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill.  She is also the founding and current Director of the UNC Microbiome Core, which provides research and technical support to investigators interested in addressing the roles of the host-associated microbiota in health and disease.

Dr. Azcarate-Peril is a microbiologist by training and has extensive experience in the characterization of complex microbial populations and functional metagenomics using culture-dependent and culture-independent methods including Next Generation Sequencing. Her research projects have focused on functional genomics of probiotics and gut microbiome modulation by prebiotics for over 20 years, resulting in over 65 peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Azcarate-Peril’s current projects aim to define modulators of the gut microbiome capable of reversing dysbioses induced by age, diet and nutritional behaviors. She is particularly interested in prebiotics and application-directed probiotics to address and prevent gastrointestinal disorders.

My research interests are focused on the evaluation of interventions and policies to improve nutritional behaviour, behavioural nutrition in children and young people, and factors affecting diet quality and health outcomes.

Professor Edward's work encompasses studies of the gut microflora, colonisation of the infant gut, metabolic and bio-availability of phenolic antioxidant, and the impact of dietary carbohydrate on metabolism. She has also coordinated two major EU projects MEDIGUT and INFABIO.

Mary Ward graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BSc Hons in Human Nutrition and Dietetics. She is a registered dietitian and a Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the Nutrition Innovation Centre for Food and Health (NICHE), within the School of Biomedical Sciences at Ulster University, Northern Ireland where she has been involved in educating food, nutrition and dietetics students at undergraduate and postgraduate level for >25 years. Her research is focused on micronutrients, with a particular interest in the B-vitamins involved in one-carbon metabolism and their role in disease prevention from early life through to older age. She is also interested in the health impacts (including impact on micronutrient status) of transitioning to healthy diets from sustainable sources and is part of the All-Island Food Integrity Initiative which includes key stakeholders from academia, government and Industry from across the island of Ireland.

She leads an active research program at Ulster, where she heads up the Nutrition and Cardiovascular Unit and has vast experience of leading human trials in healthy and patient cohorts. She has published extensively in top-ranked international journals across several disciplines and has attracted significant external funding to support her research. She is committed to mentoring early career researchers and has supervised 25 PhD candidates to successful completion.

Mary has been a member of the Nutrition Society for almost 30 years, having served as an ordinary committee member as well as membership secretary and Chair of the Irish Section prior to her current role as President. External to Ulster sits on the Scientific Committee of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, is Deputy Director of the Wellcome Trust-Wolfson Northern Ireland Clinical Research Facility and is a member of the Life and Health sciences committee of the Royal Irish Academy.

Mark Hollingsworth is Chief Executive Officer and Company Secretary of The Nutrition Society and its subsidiary Trading Company. He is responsible for managing the affairs of the Society for the benefit of members at the direction of the Trustee Board. 

Cassandra is responsible for the Society's academic publications, the scientific programmes portfolio and scientific and external ensuring an integrated approach across the Society’s activities. She contributes to the Society’s strategic and operational planning, being a member of the senior management team. 

Jade is responsible for developing and managing the Society's scientific progammes, including the Training Academy's programme and the annual conference portfolio.