Vice President for Research, Innovation and Impact, UCD
Professor Helen Roche is Interim Vice-President for Research, Impact and Innovation and Full Professor Nutrigenomics (Nutrition & Omics) at UCD. Professor Helen Roche's academic background is in Human Nutrition & Molecular Medicine. Her appointment as Full Professor of Nutrigenomics bridges disciplines based at the UCD Conway Institute and the UCD Institute of Food & Health within UCD. She is also a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Principal Investigator and a Food for Health Ireland (FHI) Principal Investigator. In 2014 she won significant funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; NUTRIMAL is a large project grant addressing 'Novel Nutritional Solutions to Combat Malnutrition in the Elderly' in collaboration with the HSE, SafeFood and a number of industry partners. In collaboration with UCC APC, another FIRM award ImmunoMet will address the interactions between nutritional status, metabolic health and the gut microbiome. Earlier in her career as Wellcome Trust Fellow & Senior Lecturer in Molecular Nutrition at TCD, Dr Roche established the first Nutrigenomics research group in Ireland, at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at TCD. Prof Roche was recently appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the European Healthy Life Healthy Diet (HDHL) Joint Programming Initiative (JPI).