Areas of interest
Professor Lovegrove’s research interests are on diet in the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases, with focus on the metabolic impact of dietary fats, dairy, plant phytochemicals, nutrient-gene interactions and personalised nutrition. Her work has made a major contribution in establishing the relevance of dietary fat quality to the development of cardiometabolic diseases.
Postgraduate supervision
- Currently supervising 11 PhD students
- Supervised 44 PhD students (completing in 4 years)
- External PhD examiner for 48 students in UK, Europe and Australia
Teaching
- Over 34 years teaching experience on nutrition-focussed undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes.
- Module lead on ‘Nutrition in the Management and Prevention of Disease' (UG Final year module).
Research centres and groups
- Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition
- Institute for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Research
- Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health
Research projects
- Medical Research Council ‘Data-driven integration of emerging technologies to generate a Standardised and Objective Dietary Intake Assessment Tool’ (2022-2027)
- BBSRC-Transforming the UK Food System. ‘Raising the Pulse (RtP): Systems analysis of the environmental, nutritional and health benefits of pulse-enhanced foods’ (2022-2025)
- Barham Foundation ‘Circulating branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) are associated with increased the risk of type 2 diabetes: Does dietary intake of BCAA contribute?’ (2024-2027)
- Food4Years MRC hub ‘Fibre4Years – fibre in older people’ (2023)
- Rank Prize Funds ‘Diet Inequity in obesity’ workshop (2023-2024)
- Rank Prize Funds ‘The Association between intakes of SFA, Protein and Calcium from Different Food Sources and Health and Sustainability’ (2019-2024)
- Medical Research Council UK-Peru ‘Study of Obesity, Nutrition, and Genes in Peru’ (2020-2024)
- Joint Academic and Berkshire initiative ‘eNutri-cardio’ (2020-2023)
- H2020 – Food Nutrition Science-Cloud ‘Food Nutrition Security – Cloud’ (2019-2023)
Academic qualifications
- PhD Nutritional Biochemistry, School of Biological Sciences, University of Surrey
- BSc (Hons) Human Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Surrey
- Registered Nutritionist (Nutritional Science) [698]
Awards and honours
- Fellow of Royal Society of Biology (2024)
- Demonstrating Excellence (UoR) (2024)
- British Nutrition Foundation Annual Prize (2022)
- Fellow of the Association for Nutrition (2013)
- Leadership Award (RETF-UoR). (2009)
- Outstanding research (UoR) (2007)
- Team Teaching Award (UoR) (2006)
Professional bodies/affiliations
- Nutrition Society
- Academy of Nutritional Sciences
- American Society of Nutrition
- Association for Nutrition
- Royal Society of Biology
External activities
- Deputy Chair: UK Government's Scientific Advisory Committee for Nutrition (SACN) (2020-date)
- Chair: SACN’S Framework and Methods for Evaluation of Evidence subgroup (2021-date)
- Member: National Diet and Nutrition Survey Project Board (2010-date)
- Member: Medical Research Council’s Population and Systems Medical Board (2021-date)
- Scientific Advisory Board Member for Faculty of Life Sciences. University of Vienna (2024-date)
- Trustee: Academy of Nutrition Sciences (2023-date)
- Advisory Board for Centre for Global Food Security. QUB. (2018-date)
- President: The Nutrition Society, UK and Ireland (2019-2023)
- Deputy Chair: Association for Nutrition (AfN) Council (2016-2019)
- Chair: AfN Accreditation Committee (2011-2019)
- Member: SACN Potassiu -based sodium replacers working group (2015-2017)
- Member: SACN (2009-date)
- Member: SACN’s ‘Saturated fats and health’ working group (2015-2019Member: SACN’s ‘Carbohydrates and Health' working group (2010-2015)
- Member: Commonwealth Scholarship Committee (2014-date)
