Mary Ward

UU

Mary Ward is a registered dietitian and a Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the Nutrition Innovation Centre for Food and Health, within the School of Biomedical Sciences at Ulster University, Northern Ireland where she is actively involved in teaching and research. Her research is focused on micronutrients, particularly the health impacts of B-vitamins and their role in disease prevention from early life through to older age. She has a specific interest in personalised nutrition, including the interaction between nutrients and our genes, which has led to the novel discovery that vitamin B2 (riboflavin) appears to be important in maintaining a healthy blood pressure in certain individuals. She leads an active research program at Ulster, where she heads up the Nutrition and Cardiovascular Unit and has vast experience of leading human trials in healthy and patient cohorts. She has published extensively in top-ranked international journals across several disciplines and has attracted significant external funding from government agencies in the UK and Ireland, the EU, Charities and Industry. Mary is currently president elect of the Nutrition society (UK and Ireland) and a former Chair of the Irish Section of the Nutrition Society. She sits on the Scientific Committee of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and is Deputy Director of the Wellcome Trust-Wolfson Northern Ireland Clinical Research Facility. She is committed to mentoring early career researchers and has supervised 25 PhD candidates to successful completion.