Chris Forbes-Ewan is a Senior Fellow with the Food and Nutrition Capability of the Defence Science and Technology Group (DST Group). Trained as a biochemist, Chris has over 40 years experience in Defence food science, mostly in the area of military nutrition. In the period 1986–1995 he led a team that conducted extensive research into combat ration acceptability, food intake, energy expenditure and physical performance enhancement of members of the Australian Defence Force. More recently, his areas of research interest have also included nutrition promotion, anthropometry (body composition measurement) and hydration status.

From 1994 to 2003 Chris was the Australian National Leader on an international defence technical panel that aimed to enhance physical and cognitive performance for conventional and special operations. Between 2006 and 2011 he represented Australia on two NATO expert groups investigating how combat rations could be optimised for field feeding.

Richard is Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Otago, Christchurch and Consultant Gastroenterologist at Christchurch Hospital. He has trained in Christchurch in addition to Box Hill Hospital, Melbourne, Australia and St Mark’s Hospital, London, UK. He is Medical Director of the NZ Nutrition Foundation, Medical Advisor to Crohn’s and Colitis NZ and the NZ member of the International Organisation for the Study of IBD. His clinical research interests include inflammatory bowel disease, coeliac disease, parenteral nutrition  and irritable bowel syndrome. Recent research endeavours include manipulation of faecal microbiota in health and disease using nutrition. He was the youngest joint clinical staff member to be awarded the University of Otago, Christchurch Gold Medal for Research.

Dr Kruger spent time in Germany on a DAAD scholarship after her PhD which was awarded in 1986; she, was appointed as post-doctoral fellow in biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, USA in the same year. Marlena was later recruited to the Department of Physiology at the University of Pretoria, in 1991, to set up a bone research laboratory with the focus on fatty acids and bone health. Marlena migrated to New Zealand to take up an appointment at Massey University in April 2000 where her role was to establish bone research in the university. She progressed at Massey University to Associate Professor in 2002, Director of the Division of Human Nutrition, and Member of the Executive Committee of the then Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health in 2005. She was also promoted to her current position as Chair in Nutritional Physiology in 2005. Marlena took on the role of Director of Research for the College of Health in 2013. Marlena is internationally recognised for her research on the role of long chain fatty acids in the maintenance of bone health. Her current research focuses on nutrition and bone and joint health with an emphasis on dairy foods, lipids and polyphenols

James P. McClung, Ph.D. is a Principal Investigator in the Military Nutrition Division at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM) in Natick, Massachusetts.  Dr. McClung completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of New Hampshire, and his doctoral degree at Cornell University.  Following his doctoral studies, he was awarded a National Research Council post-doctoral fellowship, which he completed at USARIEM prior to accepting a position as a scientist in the Military Nutrition Division.  His research focuses on micronutrient nutrition at both the basic and applied levels.  Recent studies include the assessment of micronutrient status in military training environments, to include basic combat training.  Dr. McClung is an active member of a number of domestic and international societies, to include the American Society for Nutrition.  He currently serves on the editorial boards of both the Journal of Nutrition and the British Journal of Nutrition.

Lynn Moore is the co-Director of the graduate programs in Nutrition and Metabolism at Boston University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, where she has been a nutritional epidemiologist and faculty member in the Department of Medicine for more than 20 years. Her graduate training was at the Boston University School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Moore is an investigator with the renowned Framingham Heart Study and a number of other large-scale epidemiologic studies of children and adults. Her research focus for many years has been obesity - both its causes and consequences across the life span. In recent years, her research has come to focus increasingly on controversial nutrition-related questions, such as the effects of dietary sodium on blood pressure or dietary cholesterol and cardiovascular risk. She has a particular interest in protein-rich foods and a wide range of health outcomes including hypertension, sarcopenia, and diabetes.

Professor Novotny has published 120 scientific papers related to maternal, infant and child nutrition and health in remote regions and among culturally diverse populations. Dr. Novotny is currently Professor of Nutrition and Chair of the Intercollege PhD Program in Nutrition at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has served as Department Chair for the Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences, and as Director of the Kaiser Permanente, Center for Health Research in Hawaii. Professor Novotny also has appointments at the University of Hawaii’s Department of Public Health and Cancer Center. She is Principal Investigator of the Children’s Healthy Living Program for Remote Underserved Minority Populations of the Pacific, or CHL, a 25 million dollar community-based multi-level intervention, training and outreach program throughout the US Affiliated Pacific region.

Caryl Nowson has a research program spanning 30 years that has focused on two major diseases of ageing: nutrition related to hypertension, and nutrition related to bone health.  She has a particular interest in dietary factors related to health outcomes for older people. She has contributed to a number of intervention studies (food and supplement based studies), some that have been combined with exercise, which have assessed the impact of dietary protein and calcium together with vitamin D status on risk factors for falls and fractures in older people in the community and in residential care.

Professor John Pluske is currently Professor in the School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia; and Honorary Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.  He has a Bachelor of Science (Agriculture); The University of Western Australia (1988).

He was Visiting Professor at The University of Guelph (Guelph, ON, Canada; 2005), and Australian-American Fulbright Commission Distinguished Chair in Agriculture and Life Sciences at Kansas State University (Manhattan, KS, USA; 2014-2015).

Research interests are focused on nutrition-gut disease interactions in young pigs, general pig nutrition, pig growth and development, piglet behaviour, feed and ingredient evaluation, nutrition-immunology-microbiome interactions, nutritional alternatives to growth promoting antimicrobials, and bacterial resistance to dietary antimicrobial compounds.

Associate Professor Louise Signal is a social scientist and Director of the Health Promotion and Policy Research Unit at the University of Otago, Wellington. Her current research includes studying children’s exposure to advertising, alcohol and junk food and developing appropriate interventions for change. Louise is the Regional Director of the South West Pacific Region of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education.

Professor Gerald Tannock’s research at the University of Otago concerns the communities of bacteria (microbiota, microbiome) that inhabit the gastrointestinal tracts of humans and other vertebrate animals. These bacterial communities have considerable impact on the animal host in both health and disease. His research has entered a translational stage in which the results of fundamental research are used to develop commercial prospects. The research focuses on the development of the bowel community during the first 1000 days of human life, prospective correction of dysbiosis of the bacterial community of the bowel using novel polysaccharides as growth substrates for bowel bacteria, and the bacteriology of inflammatory bowel diseases. These research interests involve extensive collaboration with multidisciplinary teams at the University of Otago and elsewhere in New Zealand and overseas. He is currently the holder of a prestigious James Cook Research Fellowship, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

Prof. Wagner is Nutritionist and since 2011 Professor of Nutrition and Food Quality at University of Vienna, Austria. He is Vice Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, leads various research foci such as the University wide Research Platform “Active Ageing” or the Emerging Field “Oxidative Stress and DNA Stability” and is President of the Austrian Nutrition Society. He also serves as Adjunct Professor at Griffith University in Australia. His research is mainly biomarker driven and following a translational approach from cell to organism. The main interest at the moment is Oxidative Stress and DNA/Chromosomal Damage, which he and his team have explored in several international and national human cross sectional, case control or intervention studies trying to predict the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer and CVD on systemic, cellular and molecular level.