RESEARCHER PROFILE (Filmed January 2024)
Laureate Professor Clare Collins AO
Nutrition and Dietetics in the School of Health Sciences,
University of Newcastle & Director, Food and Nutrition Research Program
Hunter Medical Research Institute
New South Wales, Australia
Laureate Professor Clare Collins is helping people access effective medical nutrition therapies that significantly reduce their risk of chronic disease. She and her team are developing innovative technologies, including apps and online programmes.
Prof Collins is Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics in the School of Health Sciences, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing. She has received three prestigious NHMRC Research Fellowships, is currently Director of Hunter Medical Research Institute, Food and Nutrition Program and been a dietitian for over 40 years.
Laureate Professor Collins has made major contributions to our knowledge on the impact of improving diet quality and food patterns on health and wellbeing outcomes. Her research in precision and personalised nutrition is driving a paradigm shift in technologies that improve delivery of medical nutrition therapy to under-served groups based on life-stage, socio-economic status or geographic location, for whom the chronic disease burden is 40-50% higher. This is generating new knowledge on cost-effective models of care that are available online or can be embedded in health settings.
Her passion was fuelled growing up as one of nine children and being in the first generation of her family to have the opportunity complete year 12 and go to university. She learnt from an early age the meaning of hard work, the importance of grasping opportunities when they arose and the importance of share the fruits of those opportunities.
Laureate Professor Collins is a Fellow of four prestigious bodies, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, the Nutrition Society of Australia, Dietitians Australia, and the Royal Society of NSW. As the most successful research dietitian globally, her team includes dietitians, nutritionists, biochemists, computer scientists, biomedical engineers and software developers.
She has been awarded over $29 million dollars in research grants, published over 450 manuscripts and supervised 35 PhD and Master candidates to completion so far. Laureate Professor Collins is a great believer in sharing her knowledge through translation of nutrition science to benefit the public.
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ROCK-induced early-onset bowel cancer progression
Professor Michael Samuel is a cell biologist whose research interest is in understanding how cancer mechanobiology influences the tumour microenvironment, thereby promoting tumour progression. He is Professor of Matrix Biology at the University of South Australia, Adelaide and heads the Tumour Microenvironment Laboratory at the Centre for Cancer Biology and the Cancer Mechanotherapies Laboratory at the Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research.
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Computer science approach to detecting dementia
Watch Xinyi Wang, a researcher at the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, University of Tasmania talk on identifying new approaches to detecting dementia.
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Role of metabolic dysfunction in advanced prostate cancer
Dr Gunter was drawn to the area of prostate cancer research and the intersection between chronic metabolic disorders and their emerging relationship to cancer. Her strengths include expertise in the metabolic syndrome, insulin signalling and metabolism, and she has a demonstrated record of successful and productive research projects in metabolic research where she now applies her efforts to understanding the role of metabolic dysfunction in advanced prostate cancer.
