SPEAKERS

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

ALASALVAR, CESARETTIN. TÜRKIYE.

Cesarettin Alasalvar (PhD, FIAFoST, FISNFF, FIFT, FRSC) is a Senior Chief Researcher at TÜBİTAK Marmara Research Center (State Owned)-Food Group. His research mainly focuses on the development of functional foods and nutraceuticals against life-threatening diseases (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and SARS-CoV-2 virus), nutritional and functional properties of foods (particularly nuts and dried fruits), bioactive properties of phytochemicals, the separation/identification of bioactives, bioavailability and bioefficacy of dietary polyphenols, and on performance of human clinical trials. He serves as the senior editor of Food Chemistry journal and associate editor of Journal of Food Bioactives. Dr Alasalvar has served as past chairs of International Society for Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods (ISNFF) and Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods Division of Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). He has been actively involved in the Framework Programme of the European Union, currently serving as the Turkish Delegate of Horizon Europe – Cluster 6. He has also been serving on the Academic Committee and World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination Committee Members of International Nut and Dried Fruit Council (INC) since 2015. Dr Alasalvar has received numerous international prestigious awards from different scientific societies, including IFT, ISNFF, and INC in recognition of his pioneering scientific achievements. He is the co-editor of eight international books in the disciplines of food, nutrition, and health.
BAER, DAVID. USA.

David J. Baer, Ph.D., is a Supervisory Research Physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center located in Beltsville, Maryland.  He serves as the Research Leader for the Center’s Food Components and Health Laboratory.  Dr. Baer conducts controlled dietary intervention studies to investigate the relationship between diet and the risk for chronic degenerative diseases, especially cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes in people.  He has investigated the role of dietary patterns, individual foods, food components, and food processing including different types of protein, fats and fatty acids, fiber, margarine, butter, plant sterols, salad dressings, meat, whole grains, pulses, berries, alcohol, tea, and of course nuts.  In addition to dietary intervention studies, Dr. Baer is involved in research studies to validate food survey methodologies and to develop new methods for dietary assessment. 
COATES, ALISON, AUSTRALIA.

Prof Alison Coates received her BSc(hons) and PhD from the University of Adelaide, South Australia. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado, she has spent the last 20 years at the University of South Australia where she is Professor in Human Nutrition and Dean of Research in Allied Health and Human Performance.
She has a proven track record as a research leader in nutritional physiology. Her research is focused on dietary strategies to improve cardiovascular and metabolic function and she has received over $13M in research funding through competitive national and international schemes.
Alison has worked closely with the Nut Industry for over a decade, including consulting for Nuts for Life (an initiative of the Australian Tree Nut Industry), leading research into the health benefits associated with peanut and almond consumption and has recently joined the INC World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination.
CUPARENCU, CATALINA, DENMARK.

Catalina Cuparencu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research combines experimental nutrition from human intervention studies with state-of-the-art metabolomics techniques to improve the accuracy of dietary assessment through the development of biomarkers of food intake and to investigate the effects of dietary changes on metabolic responses and diet-microbiome interactions. These strategies aim to enable research into precision nutrition with impact on the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases.
For over a decade, Catalina’s work has centered on developing biomarkers that reflect specific dietary components. She has been dedicated to discovering and validating biomarkers of food intake as predictors of intake in independent studies and to defining clear concepts to facilitate their integration into nutrition research
DE SOUZA, MARY JANE. USA.

Dr. De Souza is a Distinguished Professor of Kinesiology and Physiology, Director of the Women’s Health and Exercise Laboratory at Penn State University, and Executive Director of the Female and Male Athlete Triad Coalition. Dr. De Souza received her PhD from the University of Connecticut, and completed postdoctoral work in reproductive physiology and endocrinology at the University of Connecticut Medical School. Dr. De Souza’s research for 30+ years has focused on the complex interplay between metabolic, reproductive, and skeletal physiology, and is considered a preeminent expert in Athlete Triad physiology and has also focused much research on menopausal research conducting both hormonal and non-hormonal interventions. Dr De Souza has published over 200 papers and has had many extramural grants. Dr. De Souza has won teaching awards, several distinguished research career awards from several international and national organizations, and several honor awards.
GUASCH-FERRÉ, MARTA. DENMARK.

Marta Guasch-Ferré, PhD, is an Associate Professor and group leader at the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She also holds an appointment as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, U.S. Dr. Guasch-Ferré leads a research group focused on integrating nutrition and lifestyle factors with –omics data to advance the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases. She has authored numerous publications in leading scientific journals, contributing significantly to the fields of nutritional and cardiovascular epidemiology. She was awarded the Sandra A. Daugherty Award for Excellence in Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, by the American Heart Association. Dr Guasch-Ferré is the P.I. of an NIH-funded project entitled ´Circulating plasma metabolites, lifestyle factors, and mortality risk’ and the ‘Nut consumption and prevention of noncommunicable diseases: a global individual participant data meta-analysis’ funded by the International Nut Council.
HU, FRANK .USA

Frank Hu, MD, MPH, PhD, is the Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His major research interests include epidemiology and prevention of cardiometabolic diseases through diet and lifestyle; gene-environment interactions and risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes; nutritional metabolomics in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease; and nutrition transition, metabolic phenotypes, and cardiovascular disease in low and middle-income countries. Dr. Hu serves as Director of Dietary Biomarker Development Center and Co-director of Obesity Epidemiology and Prevention Program at Harvard. Dr. Hu is the recipient of the Kelly West Award for Outstanding Achievement in Epidemiology by the American Diabetes Association in 2010. He was named the American Heart Association’ Ancel Keys Memorial Lecturer in 2018. He has published a textbook on Obesity Epidemiology (Oxford University Press) and >1500 peer-reviewed papers with an H-index of 318. Dr. Hu served on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, USDA/HHS. He has served on the editorial/advisory board of The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, Diabetes Care, and Clinical Chemistry. Dr. Hu a member of National Academy of Medicine.
JORIS, PETER. THE NETHERLANDS.

Dr. Peter Joris is member of the Physiology of Human Nutrition (PHuN) Research Group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He is Associate Professor within the Research Institute of Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism (NUTRIM). As a nutritional scientist he is registered at the Dutch Academy of Nutritional Sciences (NAV) of which he was elected vice-chair from 2020-2023. He is vice-chair of the Medical Ethics Committee of the University Hospital Maastricht and Maastricht University. His research combines imaging and physiology to study dietary effects on vascular function and metabolic health in the periphery as well as in the brain, and cognitive/functional endpoints. For this, he applies innovative vascular imaging and MRI methods to assess brain function in resting conditions, and in response to challenges, including nasal insulin administration (brain insulin-sensitivity), stress and tolerance tests. He supervised various research projects that provided evidence that new-concepts for healthy living play an instrumental role in improving brain function, thereby contributing to the prevention of cognitive impairment and promoting healthy aging.
KENDALL, CYRILL. CANADA

Dr. Kendall is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, and the Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Center, St. Michael’s Hospital, and an Adjunct Professor in the Division of Nutrition and Dietetics, College of Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Saskatchewan.  He was educated at the University of Toronto, where he obtained his Honors BSc, MSc and PhD. His primary research interest is the role of diet  and dietary patterns in the prevention and treatment of chronic disease.  Dr. Kendall has over 250 publications in peer-reviewed medical journals.  He is a founding member of the International Carbohydrate Quality Consortium (ICQC), Chair of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group (DNSG), and Director of Glycemia Consulting and the Toronto 3D Knowledge Synthesis and Clinical Trials Foundation.
GANG, LIU. CHINA

Gang Liu, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Assistant Dean of School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Dr. Liu received his PhD degree from Chinese Academy of Sciences, and then got his postdoctoral training at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health from 2015 to 2018. He was promoted to Research Associate at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health in 2019.
Dr. Liu’s research has focused on diet/lifestyle, metabolic, and genetic factors in relation to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease based on cohort studies and randomized clinical trials. He has published more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including NEJM, BMJ, Nature Food, Nature Human Behaviour, Lancet Diabetes Endocrinology, Lancet Healthy Longevity, Diabetes Care. He has served as Associate Editors of European Journal of Nutrition, Nutrition & Metabolism.
VASANTI, MALIK. USA.

Vasanti Malik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Chronic Disease Prevention. Dr. Malik’s research uses a combination of epidemiological studies, clinical trials and evidence synthesis to evaluate dietary and modifiable risk factors for obesity and cardiometabolic diseases in different populations across the life course. Her wholistic approach considers the intersection of diet, health and environmental sustainability and draws on implementation science and social determinants of health frameworks. The goal of Dr. Malik’s work is to generate evidence that can inform dietary guidance, public health policies and community-based programs to prevent chronic diseases and promote more sustainable food systems.
MECOCCI, PATRIZIA, ITALY.

Full Professor in Gerontology and Geriatrics, University of Perugia, Head of the Department of Geriatrics, University Hospital S.M. Misericordia, Perugia (Italy); Foreign Adjunct Professor Division of Clinical Geriatrics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm (Sweden). She received her M.D. from the University of Perugia (Italy), where she completed a residency program in Geriatrics. She also earned a Ph.D. in Biology and Physiopathology of Aging at the University of Modena (Italy). After three years as a research fellow, first at the University of Lund (Sweden) and then at MGH-Harvard Medical School in Boston (USA), she started her academic career at the University of Perugia. She worked as a partner in various European Union-funded projects of FP6, FP7, Horizon 2020, IHI programs, and JPND programs concerned with improving the diagnosis/treatment of dementia, problems related to aging, and healthcare opportunities for an aging Europe. She has authored/co-authored more than 430 peer-reviewed publications, has contributed 40 books/chapters and monographs, and is a regular contributor speaker at international and national congresses.
MOHAMMADIFARD, NOUSHIN. IRAN.

Dr. Noushin Mohammadifard is an Associate Professor and Head of the Nutrition Department at the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CRI), Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Iran, a WHO Collaborating Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. She also serves as the Deputy Director of CRI. With a Ph.D. in Nutrition Science from IUMS, her research focuses on dietary determinants of cardiometabolic health and community-based interventions on CVD outcomes. Has led several large studies, including the Isfahan Healthy Heart Program (IHHP), a WHO-endorsed model for developing countries, and the Isfahan Cohort Study (ICS), as well as contributing to multicentric study of Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiological (PURE) study. She has published over 260 peer-reviewed articles, some books, serves on the editorial boards of several international journals, and has been a keynote speaker at international conferences. Her work is internationally recognized, placing her among the most highly cited researchers in her field.
MOHAN, VISWANATHAN. INDIA.

Dr. V. Mohan is Chairman, Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre at Chennai in South India which is an IDF Centre of Excellence in Diabetes Care. Dr. Mohan oversees a chain of 50 diabetes centres across 8 states of India and has over 6,65,000 registered diabetes patients in his electronic records. He is also Chairman, Madras Diabetes Research Foundation which is an ICMR- Collaborating Centre of Excellence (ICMR-CCoE) and Asia’s largest standalone diabetes research centre. His main research interests are Epidemiology of diabetes and its complications, Genomics of diabetes including Monogenic Diabetes, Precision Diabetes and Nutrition in Diabetes. Dr. Mohan has published over 1730 of papers which includes 1116 original articles with over 212,885 citations, a ‘h index’ of 157, and an i-10 index of 951. Dr. Mohan has received the Dr. Harold Rifkin Award and Dr. Kelly West Award from the American Diabetes Association and the Padma Shri, from the Govt. of India.
NISHI, STEPHANIE. CANADA.

Dr. Stephanie Nishi is a Registered Dietitian, Clinical Trialist, and Educator. She is an Assistant Professor with the School of Nutrition at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada. Previously, she held a CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) Post-Doctoral Fellowship with the Unitat de Nutrició, Departament de Bioquímica i Biotecnologia at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain. For over a decade, Stephanie has been involved in chronic disease prevention from a nutritional perspective (including cardiovascular, type 2 diabetes, and cognitive health), as well as advancing evidence-based practice and knowledge dissemination with the goal of informing public health policy and nutrition guidelines. In her teaching, research, and clinical practice, Stephanie strives to be inspired and inspiring, with the aim of creating and cultivating positive, productive environments.
PETERSEN, KRISTINA S. USA.

Kristina Petersen PhD, APD, FAHA, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. She is the Director of the Diet and Cardiometabolic Health Lab, which studies dietary interventions to delay and prevent the onset of cardiometabolic diseases. The lab conducts human clinical trials to examine the effect of individual foods, bioactives, and dietary patterns on risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases. Dr. Petersen has been a principal investigator or co-investigator on several studies examining the effect of tree nuts and peanut on risk factors for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.  Dr. Petersen has a Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics (Honors) from Flinders University (Australia) and a Ph.D. in Nutrition from the University of South Australia (Australia). She completed postdoctoral training in public health and epidemiology at The George Institute for Global Health (Australia), and in nutritional sciences at the Pennsylvania State University.
ROS RAHOLA, EMILI. SPAIN.

Born in Girona, Spain, 1945. Founder and former head of the Lipid Clinic, Endocrinology Service, Hospital Clínic, Barcelona. Emeritus Investigator, Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi Sunyer, Barcelona. MD degree 1968 and PhD 1991, University of Barcelona. Postgraduate training in USA (1970-1976). American Board of Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology, Boston 1973-75. Member and founder Spanish Arteriosclerosis Society (SEA); member European and International Atherosclerosis Societies; American Society of Nutrition, American College of Cardiology, and Mediterranean Diet Foundation. Awards to best scientific career in Nutrition: Fundación Danone 2013, SEA 2014, and Catalan Nutrition Center 2015. Golden Nut award from the International Nut Council 2014. Has published more than 600 original papers, over 170 review papers, 40 editorials, and 90 scientific textbook chapters (h index 100; ORCID identifier 0000-0002-2573-1294). Present research interests: nutrition for prevention of cardiovascular diseases and cognitive decline. Led the nutritional intervention of the landmark PREDIMED trial of Mediterranean diet for primary cardiovascular prevention.
SABATÉ, JOAN. USA.

Joan Sabaté MD, Ph.D., is a Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and directs the Environmental Nutrition research program at Loma Linda University School of Public Health and a board-certified physician in Internal Medicine. He was the principal investigator of a nutrition intervention trial that directly linked the consumption of walnuts to significant reductions in serum cholesterol, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993. He is a co-investigator of the Adventist Health Studies, the largest cohort of vegetarians relating dietary intake with health outcomes. For the past 25 years, he has been the principal investigator of many human nutrition intervention trials investigating the health effects of nuts, avocados, and other plant foods. Dr. Sabaté has authored >200 high-impact research articles (h-index 82, >40,000 citations). He has been a member of the US 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
SALAS-HUETOS, ALBERT. SPAIN.

Dr. Salas-Huetos obtained his Bachelor of Science (Biology) in 2009, his MSc in Cell Biology in 2010, and his PhD in Cell Biology (Cum-Laude and Extraordinary Doctorate Award) in 2016. Nowadays, he is an Assistant Professor at Rovira i Virgili University (Spain), a Department Associate at Harvard University (USA), and a member of the (CIBERobn, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain). He has participated in 12 competitive national and international projects and he was awarded with 4 competitive, postdoctoral research contracts with a total of 40 months abroad as a post-doc. Albert has been teaching for 12 academic years at different universities with more than 800 h of magistral lectures (theory) and practicals (including Doctorate and Master courses). The main contributions of his scientific activity are reflected in a total of 94 original articles in SCI/JCR-journals. He has been awarded with prestigious prizes, including the PhD Extraordinary Award 2018 and the ASA 2025 Matthew P. Hardy Young Andrologist Award.
SALAS-SALVADÓ, JORDI. SPAIN.

Distinguished Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Human Nutrition Unit – University Rovira i Virgili (URV) and ICREA Academia Investigator. CIBERobn Principal Investigator and Coordinator of its Nutrition Programme. He is currently Director of the Catalan Nutrition Centre (CCNIEC), President of the World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination (INC), and a member of the expert panel of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group (DSNG). Prof Salas’ research has focused on human clinical trials to evaluate the effects of foods, dietary compounds and dietary patterns on obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. Since 2005, he has been one of the principal investigators of the PREDIMED study (n=7447 participants) and is currently the coordinator and chairman of the steering committee of the PREDIMED-Plus study (n=6874 participants), two large clinical trials for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and mortality. PREDIMED-Plus is a multi-collaborative project involving 30 research groups and has received national, European, Canadian and US grants. Through all these projects and collaborations, the group has developed skills in precision medicine using different OMIC methodologies, in particular metabolomics, proteomics and metagenomics, which we are now implementing in epidemiological and clinical studies. He is also involved in two prospective national and international cohort studies: CORALS (children followed for 10 years) and LEDFERTYL (men of reproductive age). He has published more than 750 scientific articles with more than 48000 citations and a SCI H-index of 101, has published 14 books and has supervised 40 PhD students. Has been named one of the world’s most influential researchers by Clarivate Analytics and Stanford University.
SIEVENPIPER, JOHN. CANADA

Dr. Sievenpiper is a Clinician Scientist who holds appointments as a Professor at the University of Toronto and Staff Physician and Scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital. He has established an internationally recognized research program focused on using randomized controlled trials and epidemiological approaches to address questions of clinical and public health importance in relation to diet and cardiometabolic disease prevention. He is the recipient of numerous awards. He is directly involved in clinical practice guidelines development for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease with appointments to expert committees in Canada and Europe. He has authored > 280 papers and was recognized as a 2023 and 2024 Highly Cited Researcher (top 0.1% of researchers).
SPRINGMANN, MARCO. UK.

Marco Springmann is a Professorial Research Fellow in Climate Change, Food Systems and Health at UCL’s Institute for Global Health, and a Senior Researcher on Environment and Health at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. He conducts multi-disciplinary research that connects food systems, climate change, and public health. His research has been published in leading journals, including Nature, Science, The Lancet, the BMJ, and others. In addition, he has contributed to high-level reports, including those of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, the Global Nutrition Report, and the UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report. 
VERHAGEN, HANS. THE NETHERLANDS.

Prof. Dr. Hans Verhagen has over 42 years of experience in food safety and nutrition. He is a certified toxicologist and nutritionist. He worked at Universities (Nijmegen, Maastricht, Ulster, Copenhagen), in contract research (TNO), in industry (Unilever), for the national government (RIVM), and EFSA from 2015-2020. From 2006-2015 he was a member of the EFSA-NDA panel, working on health claims and novel foods. He is a professor at the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland) and at the Technical University Denmark (DTU, Denmark). Since 2020, he is owner and consultant of Food Safety & Nutrition Consultancy in the Netherlands (https://www.fsnconsultancy.nl/).
YUAN, CHANGZHEENG, CHINA.

Changzheng Yuan is currently a research professor at the School of Public Health of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and an adjunct Assistant Professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has been engaged in research on nutritional epidemiology and has conducted a series of population-based empirical studies in the areas of dietary measurement, nutrition and health. She has published a series of articles in prestigious international journals such as Nature Aging, Nature Food, American Journal of Epidemiology, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Neurology. Her current research focuses on population-based studies of nutrition and cognitive decline and sustainable food system transformation.