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.