Princess Royal, Princess Anne awards Dr Megan Rossi with grant

Dr Megan Rossi from the Department of Nutritional Sciences has been awarded the British Nutrition Foundation Drummond Pump Priming Award. Princess Royal, Princess Anne presented Megan with the award and Megan was fortunate enough to speak with Princess Ann before the award ceremony.

The British Nutrition Foundation awarded two £5000 grants to help newly-appointed university lecturers and research fellows in human nutrition to undertake the pilot work needed to generate data that can be used as the basis of a more substantial grant application. 

Megan received one of the grants for her research on how probiotics work in treating Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). IBS is a functional gut disorder that is a major, growing public health problem affecting 10-15% of adults worldwide. A number of studies have suggested probiotics are a promising therapy for IBS. Nonetheless, there is still considerable variability in treatment response which has limited the utilisation of probiotics in practice. In order to reduce this variability a better understanding of how probiotics work in IBS is needed- a challenge Megan aims to address.

“This high impact pilot investigation is fundamental to advancing the dietary management of IBS therefore giving my work the competitive edge needed to attract large scale funding. Without the generosity of the Drummond Memorial Fund this novel work would not be possible- for this I am extremely grateful,” says Megan.