A Tipperary scientist based at University College Dublin (UCD) has been awarded a €2 million research grant by the European Union (EU) (under EU/Horizon 2020) to explore the relationship between diet and health.
Dr. Lorraine Brennan (BA, PhD), a Conway Fellow and a PI in the UCD Institute of Food and Health is the daughter of parents and Kilkenny natives Mrs Breda and Mr Joe Brennan, both of whom reside at Rossoulty, Upperchurch, Thurles, here in Co Tipperary.
Dr Brennan’s areas currently under development include (1) the use of a metabolomic approach to identify novel biomarkers of dietary intake and (2) the use of metabolomic signatures (“metabotypes”) to identify responder’s to dietary interventions in a move towards personalised nutrition.
Dr. Brennan’s research interests revolve around metabolism and altered metabolic pathways in health and disease and to this end she leads a metabolomics research group in UCD and is instrumental in the development of metabolomics for nutritional research.
Dr. Brennan is a partner in the FP7 projects NutriTech and Food4me. She is a PI in The National Nutrition Phenotype Database where she was responsible for the metabolomics data. She represents the Irish Nutrigenomics Organisation (JINGO) in the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) ENPADASI.
She has published over 80 peer-reviewed publications including publications in leading journals such as Nature, Diabetes and Diabetalogia. She regularly serves as a reviewer for international journals and since 2010 she is serving as an academic editor in PLoS One. Since 2009, she has delivered 16 invited lectures at International Conferences. Dr Brennan is actively involved in undergraduate teaching and delivers a range of lectures to Human Nutrition and Medical students.
She is also a member of the Irish Nutrition Society Executive. In September 2014, she was appointed as co-director of the European Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO).
Dr. Brennan has stated that this funding will now greatly assist in establishing what type of diet is best for human development.
Thurles congratulates Dr. Lorraine Brennan on all her achievements.
Come on Upperchurch.