6th Annual Nutrition Omics Symposium

Clary Clish is Senior Director of the Metabolomics Platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he is also an Institute Scientist.

Prior to joining the Broad Institute, Clish held senior and executive management positions in the biotechnology industry from 2001-2008, including Vice President of Discovery at Gene Logic Inc. and Director of Metabolite Biochemistry at Beyond Genomics Inc. From 1997-2001, Clish was a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in the laboratory of Dr. Charles Serhan at the Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. In the Serhan laboratory, his work focused on understanding the roles of lipid mediators in acute inflammation and its resolution, including his discovery and characterization of a new class of anti-inflammatory lipid mediators that have since been named “resolvins.”

Clish received his B.Sc. from McGill University in chemistry and biological sciences and his Ph.D. from Portland State University.

Dr. Dolores Corella, is Full Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the School of Medicine at the University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain. She has also been principal investigator of the CIBER Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition since 2006 (Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid). Additionally, she has been Director of the Genetic and Molecular Research Unit at the University of Valencia since 1998. She is a pioneer in Spain in the integration of genomics into the traditional epidemiological research of cardiometabolic diseases. Among the different environmental factors, she focused her research on the study of gene-diet interactions, contributing to the development of Nutritional Genomics. She is currently focusing her research on the integration of different omics (genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, exposomics, metabolomics) in the investigation of gene-environment interactions in general, and in nutrigenomics in particular. She has collaborated with dozens of national and international groups (including the Framingham Study, the Boston Puerto Rican Health Study, The Singapore National Health Survey, the GOLDN study, the EPIC study, the PREDIMED Plus study, etc.) and has published more than 425 articles. She has directed more than 24 Doctoral Theses and numerous research projects. She is a member of the Association of Women Researchers and Technologists and is incorporating the gender perspective into her research projects, specifically through a PROMETEO project of excellence for the integration of omics with a gender perspective in precision nutrition. She has received numerous awards, outstanding among which is the prestigious King Jaume I Award in Medical Research in 2018.

Jean-Philippe Drouin-Chartier is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Université Laval (Québec, Canada), researcher at the Center for Nutrition, Health and Society (NUTRISS) of the Institute on nutrition and functional foods (INAF) of Université Laval, and a registered dietician, member of the Ordre Professionel des Diététistes du Québec.

Jean-Philippe obtained a MSc in nutrition and a PhD in experimental medicine from Université Laval and completed a postdoctoral training under Dr. Frank B. Hu’s mentorship in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health with the support of a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research before returning to Université Laval as an assistant professor in 2020.

His research focuses on dietary determinants of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Much of his work covers the effects of dairy products, eggs or sugary drinks on cardiometabolic health.

Dr. Guasch-Ferré is a Research Scientist in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Dr. Guasch-Ferré earned her PhD in Nutrition and Metabolism from the Rovira i Virgili University, Spain. She previously earned a BS and Master in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the same university. Her research interests include the role of Mediterranean diet, nuts, olive oil, and dietary fatty acids on type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and mortality. Her thesis work was aimed at evaluating the effects of key components of the Mediterranean diet ‘olive oil and nuts’ and the risk of CVD in a high-risk population participating in the Spanish PREDIMED Study. Currently, she extended her work on Mediterranean diet and cardiometabolic disease in three large cohort studies, namely the Nurse’s Health Study I and II and the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study, in which she conducted several detailed analyses on dietary factors, type 2 diabetes, CVD, and mortality.

Her ongoing research aims also include incorporating high-throughput –omics techniques, metabolomics and genetics, into traditional epidemiological analysis to gain insights into underlying mechanisms that could explain the associations between diet, lifestyle, and cardiometabolic diseases. Her previous research activities have resulted in numerous manuscripts, including many first-author publications in high impact academic journals, and she has been awarded with various competitive European and American fellowships. Currently, she is the PI of a project entitled ‘Metabolomics, dietary interventions and type 2 diabetes risk’ granted by the American Diabetes Association. In addition, she is currently working on two NIH-funded projects to study Mediterranean dietary interventions, plasma metabolites, and risk of diabetes and CVD in the PREDIMED trial.

Dr. Lee conducted his PhD study at the Department of Pharmacology, University of Minnesota and postdoc training at the Salk Institute. He is currently a faculty member of the Department of Molecular Metabolism, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The main research interest of the Lee lab is to understand bioenergetic controls of physiological processes, including the adaptive metabolic responses of feeding/fasting, endurance exercise and inflammation, using molecular/cellular approaches and mouse diseases models.

Pablo Hernández-Alonso is a Juan de la Cierva-formación post-doctoral researcher. He obtained his PhD in Nutrition and Metabolism (URV, Reus, Spain; 2016) after a MSc. in Cellular & Molecular Biology and Genetics (UV, Valencia, Spain; 2012). He has recently obtained a MSc. in Bioinformatics & Biostatistics (UOC-UB; 2019). He obtained his degree in Biotechnology 9 years ago (UPV, Valencia, Spain). He has a wide background in nuts’ research with emphasis on clinical trials. In fact, his doctoral thesis reported for the first time the beneficial effect of pistachio consumption on ameliorating insulin resistance in subjects with pre-diabetes. He is currently exploring the molecular basis and nutritional epidemiology of colorectal cancer, together with unraveling different metabolites associated with food groups and/or macronutrients and their implication on the disease. He has experience in cell biology, molecular biology (gene expression and microRNA analysis), cell culture (primary and immortalized cell lines), viral culture (replication, evolution and mutation detection), metabolomics (plasma, serum, and urine), metagenomics (DNA extraction, sequencing, and analysis), data handling & analysis (using R, Perl, Python & MATLAB) and statistics (R, SPSS & Stata).

Dr. Frank Hu is Chair of Department of Nutrition, Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He serves as Co-director of the Program in Obesity Epidemiology and Prevention at Harvard and Director of Boston Nutrition and Obesity Research Center Epidemiology and Genetics Core. His major research interests include epidemiology and prevention of cardiometabolic diseases through diet and lifestyle; gene-environment interactions and risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes; nutritional metabolomics in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He has served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Preventing the Global Epidemic of Cardiovascular Disease, the AHA/ACC Obesity Guideline Expert Panel, and the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, USDA/HHS. He has served on the editorial boards of Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, Diabetes Care, and Clinical Chemistry. Dr. Hu is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Jun Li is a research scientist in Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). She holds an MD for Preventive Medicine and a PhD for Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Environmental Health. The main area of her research focuses on the identification of risk factors for prevention of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and cardiovascular disease (CVD), with particular interest and skills on high-dimensional omics research.

Dr. Li is leading several projects identifying genomic, metabolomic, dietary, and lifestyle risk factors for T2D and CVD in the Nurses’ Health Studies (NHS), Health Professional Follow-up Study, PREDIMED study, Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, and the UK Biobank. Her research interests also extend to the new area of systems epidemiology and multi-omics integration. She is adopting new methodologies to integrate multi-omics data (including genetics, epigenetics, metabolomics, and gut microbiome) for the interpretation of disease etiology and identification of mechanisms through which diet/lifestyle factors impact cardiometabolic health.

Dr. Liang’s group focuses on developing the computational and statistical tools for analyses of multi-omics data to understand the biological mechanism for diseases and provide prediction model to assess future risk and individual benefit for intervention. We are actively working on projects to 1) Develop polygenic risk prediction model for complex diseases across multiple populations. (2) Estimate the shared genetic components between complex diseases and traits at whole genome level and individual genes. (3) Establish metabolomic signature for diseases and dietary exposure using targeted and untargeted metabolites from mass-spectrometry based metabolomics data. (4) Construct DNA methylation signature for aging and risk for childhood diseases (obesity and asthma) and its interaction with intervention and environmental exposures. (5) Map genetic variants for gene expression, methylation, metabolomics and other secondary traits (QTL mapping). Through collaborations, we apply these methods to large scale studies and unique longitudinal cohorts focus on Asthma, Allergy, Lung Cancer, COPD, Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), Diabetes, Heart Diseases and other cardiometabolic traits with study subjects from European, African, Hispanic and Asian populations.

Precision Nutrition and Cardiometabolic Health Program Director leader at IMDEA Food Institute. Prof Nutrition at UNAV

Main research in the last 30 years has been focused on the investigation of mechanisms related to obesity, including metabolomics and genetic biomarkers for understanding metabolic dysfunctions associated to excessive adiposity for Personalized nutrition and development of public health strategies . He is President of the International Union of Nutrition Sciences (IUNS) being responsible of the Task force about Personalized Nutrition and member of AESAN (Spanish Agency for Nutrition and health associated to the Ministry of Health ). He has participated in several prestigious international nutritional projects and Consortia: Socrates, DIsparities SEAFOODplus, NUGENOB, DIOGENES, FOOD4ME, STOP, PREDIMED, SWEET and PREVIEW. The most relevant results derived from these projects have been published in specialised scientific journals including, JAMA, NEJM, LANCET, Nature Reviews, AJCN,… with more than 30000 Citations and a H Factor>75 being principal author or collaborator on more than 800 papers in Obesity and Nutrition and Omics areas. Finally, he has supervised more than 75 PhD students and has been investigator or visiting professor at University of Nothingham, University of Berkeley, MIT, Harvard University, Oxford University and King College London. Also International coordinator for several position papers related to personalized nutritional management under the auspices of ISNN and IP of more than 50 national and international Projects

Full Professor and Chair, Department of Preventive Medicine & Public Health, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
Adjunct Professor, Department of Nutrition, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, USA
Group Coordinator, CIBER-OBN, Spanish National Institute of Health (ISCIII)

Prof Martínez-González is a medical epidemiologist of chronic disease with 30 years of experience and a worldwide expert in the Mediterranean diet as a preventive approach for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and other chronic diseases. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the SUN project (prospective dynamic cohort study investigating Mediterranean diet and chronic disease with around 23,000 participants and mean follow-up >10 years)

Prof. Martínez-González was the Coordinator of the PREDIMED Research Network funded by the Spanish NIH (2006-2013). PREDIMED conducted the largest randomized primary cardiovascular prevention trial with nutrition in Europe including 7447 participants in a Mediterranean dietary intervention.  Prof. Martínez-González also was the PI of the European Research Council Advanced Research Grant  to fund the PREDIMEDPLUS trial (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/188509_en.html), an on-going trial with 6,874 participants assessing the effects of an energy restricted Mediterranean diet with physical activity and weight loss on cardiovascular disease. Both the PREDIMED-1 trial (11 recruitment centres) and the PREDIMED-Plus multicentre trial (23 centres) commenced in Prof. Martínez-González’s centre (vanguard centre), which informed the design of the other centres.

He has been Co-PI of several NIH-funded grants on metabolomics, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (http://medpreventiva.es/HUqpLE).

He is editor of the textbooks in Biostatistics (Bioestadística amigable, Elsevier, 4th ed), Epidemiology (Epidemiología aplicada, Ariel 2nd ed) and Public Health (Conceptos de salud pública, Elsevier, 2nd ed) recommended in Medical Schools teaching in Spanish.

Dr. Christopher Papandreou is a senior researcher at the Institute of Health Pere Virgili, Reus, Spain. He obtained his PhD in Medicine (University of Crete, Crete, Greece; 2011). His research interests include: Metabolomics and Type 2 Diabetes/Cardiovascular Diseases; Nutrimetabolomics; Sleep, Obesity and Cardiometabolic risk; Investigation of the effect of nutrition/exercise intervention on Obstructive Sleep Apnea. The last 4 years, he has been awarded with a Post-doctoral fellowship granted by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and, recently, with a seniority fellowship (Miguel Servet) from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain.

Dr. Razquin is Research Associate at the University of Navarra. Dr. Razquin received her PhD at the University of Navarra in the field of Nutrigenetics in the frame of the PREDIMED trial. She did a 4y placement as a posdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics, and a brief placement at the Laboratory of Solid tumors and Biomarkers both in the Center for Applied Medicine in Pamplona (Spain). After that, her research has focused on the association between lifestyle factors -mainly dietary factors- on chronic diseases, especially on cardiovascular disease,  as co-investigator in the SUN Project, in the PREDIMED trial and currently also in the PREDIMED-Plus trial. She is actively working in three NIH funded projects about metabolomics, cardiovascular disease and diabetes within the PREDIMED study, and in a European Research Area (ERA-NET) funded project (FAME coordinated project).

Dr. Ruiz-Canela is Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra, Spain. He has completed his Ph.D. at the University of Navarra and Master’s Degree on Public Health in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His research is currently focused on Mediterranean diet, cardiometabolic diseases and metabolomics. He is involved in different studies including the SUN cohort and the PREDIMED-Plus trial. He is coordinating research activities between the University of Navarra and the University of Harvard on different NIH projects about metabolomics, cardiovascular disease and diabetes within the PREDIMED study. He is PI in the PREDIMAR trial, about Mediterranean diet and secondary prevention of atrial fibrillation. He is also PI in two projects on culinary medicine and prevention of chronic diseases. He has been Visiting Scientist at the Department of Nutrition of the Harvard School of Public Health (2014/2016/2018).

Prof. Jordi Salas-Salvadó is Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Human Nutrition Unit of the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) and ICREA Academy Investigator by Catalan Institution of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) , holding teaching and research positions since 1988. Currently, he is the Clinical Head of the Nutrition Unit at the Internal Medicine of the University Hospital Sant Joan of Reus; Vice-Director of the Pere i Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) and Principal Investigator of the CIBER Pathophysiology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERobn) of the Carlos III Health Institute and coordinator of its Nutrition Program. He is also the Director of the Catalan Center of Nutrition of the Institute of Catalan Studies (CCNIEC), Director of the INC-World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination Chair of the Rovira I Virgili University and is a Member of the Expert Group of Public Health Agency of Catalonia of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

At the international level, he is the Chairman of the World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination at the International Nut and Dried Fruit Foundation (INC); Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Carbohydrate Quality Consortium (ICQC); Member of the Panel of Experts of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group (DSNG) of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) and Member of the Scientific Committee of the Danone International Institute.

Between 2010-2015 he was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety (AECOSAN) and President of the Federation of Scientific Societies of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics (FESNAD).

In recent years, Dr. Salas’ research has focused on clinical trials in humans that evaluate the effect of diets and dietary compounds on obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases. Since 2005, he is one of the leaders of the PREDIMED Study and is currently Chairman of the Steering Committee and coordinator of the PREDIMED-Plus study, two large clinical trials for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and mortality.

He has been director of 25 doctoral theses, has published more than 600 scientific articles, adding more than 22,000 citations, and has an H Factor of 72 according to SCI. He has published 14 books and has participated in more than 350 national and international conferences and symposiums.

His scientific and academic work has been recognized through multiple awards and recognitions among which stand out: Corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Medical Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (2014-present), Academic of the Spanish Academy of Nutrition (2009-present). Dupont Prize of Science (2014), Josep Trueta Award to his scientific career by the Academy of Medical Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (2012), Award to his scientific career by the Spanish Academy of Nutrition (2014), Awarded for the scientific and human career by the University of Navarra (2013). Recently he has been by the “Creu de Sant Cosme i Sant Damià” distinction for scientific career, awarded as the highest recognition of the Tarragona Illustrious College of Doctors (2019).

Francisco José Tinahones Madueño. Head of Department of Endocrinology and Nutrition, Virgen de la Victoria University Hospital Málaga. Professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Malaga. Scientific Director of the Institute of Biomedical Research of Malaga (IBIMA). President of the Spanish Society of Obesity (SEEDO). Author of more than 430 scientific articles in peer review journals (Nature, Lancet, Diabetes, Diabetes Care, Am. J. Clin. Nutr., J. Clin. End. Met., Int. J. Obes., Obesity, etc …). The impact index of publications is more than 2000. Principal investigator of more than 30 competitive public projects (National and European) and more than 100 clinical trials in the areas of diabetes and obesity. 22 Directed Doctoral Theses. National Award Best Research Group of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology (SEEN).

Current position: Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra; co-PI of the CB12/03/30017 group at the CIBEROBN

Dr. Toledo is Associate Professor at the University of Navarra. Dr. Toledo received her MD and her PhD at the University of Navarra and her MPH at the National School of Health, both in Spain. She teaches several courses on Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health. Her research has focused on the association between lifestyle factors -mainly dietary factors- on chronic diseases, especially on cardiovascular disease. Since 2006 she has actively participated first as PhD student and then as co-investigator in the SUN Project, in the PREDIMED trial and currently also in the PREDIMED-Plus trial. She is helping in the coordination of two NIH-funded projects framed in the PREDIMED trial about metabolomics and cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes between the University of Navarra and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She has been Visiting Scientist at the Department of Nutrition of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She has an h-index of 37 and a full list of publications can be found at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1fYkDuD8TjCQn/bibliography/public/

Dr. Clemens Wittenbecher is an international research fellow at the Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and he is affiliated with the German Institute of Human Nutrition and the German Center of Diabetes Research (DZD). His research focuses on molecular mediators of the link between nutrition and cardiometabolic disease risk. To this end, he has developed causal inference-based methods to relate metabolomics networks to the risk of incident diseases and to identify dietary influences on such networks. He is also interested in multi-omics studies, adipokines and growth factors, and cardiometabolic risk prediction.