Nutrition, Food and Health Research Group

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”

Hippocrates (460 BC –370 BC)

Research into nutrition, food and health at the University of Newcastle’s Ourimbah Campus makes a significant contribution to the Faculty of Science & IT research portfolio. The scope of research encompasses both novel and traditional areas of food, nutrition and biologically active natural products. Scientists work as a cohesive and focused research entity composed of productive researchers who have a broad range of interests, and which include:

• Molecular Nutrition/Nutritional Genetics
• Functional Foods/Food Chemistry
• Food Processing
• Post-Harvest Technology
• Herbal Therapies/Xenobiotics

This is a new University Research Group that replaces CAFTAN (Centre for Advanced Food Technology & Nutrition) and sits comfortably within the overall Faculty research framework.

Researchers, facilities and reputation

Core researchers include Mark Lucock (Group Leader), John Golding, Minh Nguyen, Andrew Pengelly, Paul Roach, Costas Stathopoulos, Martin Veysey, Ron Wills and Zoë Yates. The group presently has 26 research students undertaking programs at Honours, Masters and PhD level.

Research facilities on campus are expanding, and include: A physical containment (level 2) laboratory, HPLC, LC-MS, GC, RT-PCR, PCR, Tisssue Culture, and a Post-Harvest Facility.

Over the past five years, significant (C1) research publications by core group members have exceeded 100, with a strong emphasis on food, and equally good track record in molecular nutrition and disease. This includes half a dozen very high impact factor papers garnering both national and international recognition; papers have recently been published in Nature Genetics Reviews, British Medical Journal, Journal of the National Cancer Institute (Worlds highest impact factor cancer journal) and Gut – all very high impact factor journals. Researchers have authored books on Food, Nutrition & Health (Ron Wills has a text book “Postharvest” [1998] while Mark Lucock has a textbook “Molecular Nutrition & Genomics: Nutrition and the Ascent of Humankind” published in July 2007) and mesh together in a clear synergy of research interests that complements the overall group strength.

Core Research Group Members

If you would like to learn more about an individual researcher, please follow the links above that person's details page and portfolio, or use a bibliographic database such as PubMed or Scirus to access copies of recent papers: Link to PubMed | Link to Scirus