UCC is a progressive university of over 14,500 students, 630 academic staff and 500 research staff. It has 8 Faculties, including Science, Food Science and Technology, Engineering, Medicine/Dentistry, Arts, Celtic Studies, Law and Commerce, 55 academic Departments and 40 research centres/units. The research income for UCC was €36M in 2001/2002, from 1500 research contracts. The research strategy at UCC is to create Centres of Excellence in targeted areas of world-class research output where groundbreaking research is conducted in an interdisciplinary manner.  Food and Health research is one of the targeted areas, and this is focussed in the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences and the Biosciences Institute. The Biosciences Institute at UCC was established in 2000 to unify research in the Biosciences area and a key part of this research is the Food and Health theme. It is home to the recently opened Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (funding in excess of €20M), which investigates the role of intestinal bacteria in health maintenance and in various diseases and explores strategies for manipulating bacterial flora to help prevent or treat intestinal disorders such as Crohn's disease, colitis, and colon cancer.  Research projects currently being co-ordinated by UCC in the area of Food and Health include HealthSense, a project in Sensory Science funded through EC FP5, involving over 70 scientists of varying disciplines and OsteoDiet, also a FP5 project examining the role of diet and gene-nutrient interactions on calcium, bone metabolism and osteoporosis prevention.  Other projects examining the links between diet and bone health include Optiford, a FP5 project which is examining strategies to improve vitamin D status in European populations and a nationally funded project to evaluate the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in a representative sample of 1300 adolescents and its implications for bone health. We are a co-ordinating centre of the National Food Surveys and are currently carrying out the National Children’s Food Survey 7-12 year old schoolchildren.