PEOPLE IN PROJECT 1.2 YOUNG

Project leader is Professor Inga Thorsdottir, PhD. She is a professor in human nutrition at the University of Iceland, and director of the Department of Clinical Nutrition, Landspitali-University Hospital. She is chairman of the Icelandic Nutritional Council, Icelandic delegate in a specialist group for Nordic Nutritional Recommendations, chairman of the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations for Children. Recently she has worked on clinical nutrition at the hospital, and ecological and epidemiological research. She has collected cohorts to study diet and health in young children and pregnant women. She participates in an on-going EU-project, ProChildren. She has an on-going project on diet and diabetes, which has led to new knowledge about the variation in cow's milk composition, i.e., protein content, in the Nordic countries.

ingathor(at)landspitali.is

Key persons in YOUNG:

Dr Narcisa Bandarra, head at the Nutrition Laboratory, IPIMAR, has a consolidated experience concerning the influence of 3-enriched diets in terms of incorporation of 3 fatty acids in the phospholipid fraction of animal tissues (kidney, liver, muscle and aorta) and human plasma and erythrocytes in normal and haemodialysis patients. She has participated in several clinical studies related to the prevention of cardiovascular disease and has been responsible for the determination of fatty acid profile and lipid classes of plasma and erythrocytes phospholipids.

Professor J. Alfredo Martinéz works at the Department of Physiology and Nutrition at the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />University of Navarra. He is a professor in food science and nutrition. Professor Martinez has carried out a number of nutritional intervention studies with different populations, healthy and obese individuals, in the last five years. His research projects has been in several nutritional fields, i.e., nutritional control of metabolism and growth, utilization of legumes, evaluation of nutritional status in different populations, computers in nutrition, nutrition and immunity, consumer surveys, as well as overweight and obesity. He has published many scientific papers in recent years and is active in nutrition societies as the Spanish Society of Nutrition and the Federation of European Nutrition Societies.

jalfmtz(at)unav.es

Dr Mairead Kiely works at the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences at UCC. She is a principal investigator of the currently ongoing Irish National Children's Food Survey in 5-12-year-old schoolchildren and was the project coordinator of the North-South Ireland Food Consumption Survey in 18-64 year old Irish adults, which set the standard in terms of establishing a nationally representative relational database of food and nutrient intakes, anthropometric and physical activity and lifestyle and health status indicators. She has extensive experience in the design and management of large-scale human volunteer studies and is currently an active participant in a 5P5 shared cost project on vitamin D intakes and status in 5 European countries called OPTIFORD. Her main research interest is in the exposure to and status of micronutrients, phytochemicals and fatty acids and influences on bone health and immune function.

Professor Sjurdur Olsen, PhD is Professor in Epidemiology. His main research field is the impact on health of maternal nutrition. He was co-Principal Incestigator on a series of randomised controlled trials conducted at 19 delivery wards in 7 different European countries, where a total of around 2000 women were randomized to receive fish oil or control treatment; taken together, this is the largest randomised controlled trial with fish oil to pregnant women conducted so far. He is member of the managerial team that has established a cohort of 100,000 pregnant women for long term follow-up, The Danish National Birth Cohort; this is by far the largest database worldwide with extensive information on maternal diet. He is PI on a randomized controlled trial with fish oil planned to recruit 10,000 pregnant women over the next three year in areas in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />China with low fish consumption.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />