Dr Adrián Carballo Casla

I am a researcher in nutritional epidemiology with a focus on aging and chronic disease prevention. My academic background includes degrees in human nutrition, quantitative research methods, and epidemiology and public health. Our work aims to understand how dietary patterns and nutritional exposures influence health trajectories in older adults. We apply advanced epidemiological methods to large-scale cohort data to explore how nutrition can support healthy ageing and reduce the burden of age-related conditions.

Our research centres on the role of diet in ageing, with a particular focus on how specific nutrients, foods, and dietary patterns affect morbidity, geriatric syndromes, and mortality in older populations. I have led and co-led studies examining the impact of fried food, the Southern European Atlantic diet and other dietary patterns, fish, protein, and vitamin D on health outcomes in older adults, as well as the role of biomarkers in understanding diet-disease relationships. We are especially interested in identifying sensitive periods of dietary exposure in old age and in exploring how psychosocial and biological factors interact with nutrition to shape aging trajectories. Through this work, we aim to contribute to the development of personalised dietary recommendations that promote longevity and health in later years.

Dr. Oliver M Shannon

Dr. Oliver M Shannon is researcher and Lecturer in Human Nutrition & Ageing within the Human Nutrition & Exercise Research Centre at Newcastle University. His research primarily explores the impact of healthy dietary patterns and dietary inorganic nitrate on brain and cardiovascular health in older adults. He has published >90 peer-reviewed journal articles, including in field-leading journals such as the British Journal of Nutrition and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. His research is funded by UKRI, major charities and industry. He was the winner of the 2024 Julie Wallace Award for early-stage scientific excellence and is the Inaugural Chair of the Nutrition Society Early Career Members Section.

Professor Mikel Izquierdo

Mikel Izquierdo is a Full Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Health Sciences at the Public University of Navarra (UPNA), Spain, and a Professor in the Spanish Olympic Committee’s Master’s Programme in High Performance Sport. He previously served as Head of the Research, Studies and Sports Medicine Unit of the Government of Navarra (2005–2010), during which he supported the preparation of Olympic-level athletes in sports such as judo, handball, and Basque pelota, and collaborated with elite professional football environments, including Liverpool FC and FC Barcelona, during highly successful competitive periods.

Prof. Izquierdo has led multiple research projects centred on biomechanics and the neuromuscular system, with particular interest in the effects of strength and power training on sports performance and on health outcomes across the lifespan—especially in ageing, frailty, and populations living with chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and obesity.

He currently leads the Exercise, Health and Quality of Life (E-FIT) research group at the Navarrabiomed Biomedical Research Centreat and is a principal investigator in CIBERFES (Networked Biomedical Research Centre on Frailty and Healthy Ageing) at Spain’s Carlos III Health Institute. He has contributed to several European Commission–funded projects, including MID-FRAIL (FP7) and DIABFRAIL-LATAM (H2020), and acts as Scientific Director of the European VIVIFRAIL project (www.vivifrail.com).

Since 2018, he has served as an external advisor to the World Health Organization Healthy Ageing initiatives, collaborating on the implementation and scaling of exercise programmes aimed at preventing frailty and falls worldwide. He has supervised over 40 doctoral theses, authored more than 560 indexed scientific papers (h-index 105), and received over 55,000 citations. During the canpast decade, he has managed more than €2.5 million in competitive research funding. His recent publications are be accessed at: http://goo.gl/zaiGw8.

Dr Holly Neill

Dr Holly Neill is the Science Manager at Yakult UK and Ireland where she communicates the latest research on the gut microbiota, probiotics and health. Holly holds a PhD in nutrition and has experience managing and conducting human trials across a range of topics including vitamin D, polyphenols, B-vitamins and cardiovascular health in both healthy populations and ileostomy patients. Before transitioning to industry, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher and has presented her published research internationally

Professor Wendy Hall

Wendy Hall is Professor of Nutritional Sciences at King’s College London and Head of the Department of Nutritional Sciences, School of Life Course & Population Sciences. Her research focuses on how diet and specific dietary components influence cardiometabolic health, with particular interest in vascular function, blood lipids and inflammation. She has led multiple chronic and acute dietary intervention studies to unravel mechanisms underpinning the role of whole diets, single foods, fats, and polyphenols in risk of developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. A registered nutritionist (Association for Nutrition), she has secured significant research funding from UK government, non-profit food organisations, and charities mainly to conduct randomised controlled trials of dietary interventions.

Professor Hall is dedicated to advancing evidence-based nutritional science through research and teaching. She has editorial roles for leading nutrition journals, including deputy editorship of the British Journal of Nutrition. She is an active member of the Nutrition Society, currently serving as Trustee/Honorary Programmes Officer

Dr Niharika Duggal

Dr Niharika Duggal is an Associate Professor at the Department of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham with a long-standing interest in the field of immunesenescence and its impact upon ageing and health and was awarded the prestigious Koranchevsky Award from the British Society of Research on Ageing for her work in the research area. She has built a dynamics research team aimed at advancing our understanding of the complex interaction between our gut microbiome and immune system and is investigating the potential of microbiome-based interventions in reversing the immune ageing clock which impact healthspan . She has served as a co-lead for the UKRI funded Food4Years Ageing Network.

Dr Francesco Asnicar

Dr. Francesco Asnicar is a tenure-track researcher at the Department CIBIO of the University of Trento, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and has a strong background in computational biology, with a focus on developing novel methods for analyzing microbial communities. His research investigates the intricate interplay between diet and the human gut microbiome. Dr. Asnicar's expertise lies in computational phylogenetics, statistical analysis, and machine learning, which he leverages to explore the complex relationships between dietary patterns and metabolic responses mediated by the gut microbiome.

Dr Julie Whitney

Julie is a clinical academic physiotherapist specialising in ageing, with a particular interest in falls, frailty, cognitive impairment and rehabilitation interventions. She is a lecturer at King’s College London, teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate physiotherapy courses. She has led on two fall prevention clinical trials and contributed to a number of systematic reviews.

She is currently the clinical lead for the National Inpatient Falls Audit which covers England and Wales and a member of the committee contributing to the development of NICE guidelines for fall prevention. She works clinically at King’s College Hospital leading a falls clinic and providing liaison services to care home residents.

Professor Stephen Harridge

Stephen Harridge obtained his PhD from the University of Birmingham in 1993 after which he undertook post-doctoral research in Scandinavia, initially at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and then at the Copenhagen Muscle Research Centre. On return to the UK he held academic positions at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine and in the Department of Physiology at University College London, where he was also a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow.

He was appointed Professor of Human & Applied Physiology at King’s in 2005 and is head of the Centre for Human and Applied Physiological Sciences. He is also co-Director of Ageing Research at King’s (ARK) and since 2012 has been Editor-in-Chief of the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports.

His research is multi-disciplinary, using single cell through to whole-body exercise physiology approaches. This has primarily been with the aim of increasing understanding of the biology of human skeletal muscle regarding its function and adaptability. A particular focus has been on healthy human ageing, but his research also encompasses the effects of critical illness and the aerospace environment.