A research fellow within the UCD Institute of Food and Health, Dr Breige McNulty has co-coordinated the National Adults Nutrition Survey (NANS) and National Preschool Nutrition Survey (NPNS) within Ireland. During this period invaluable experience has been gained in collecting, collating and managing large national surveys, and in the analysis of dietary intake data and markers of nutritional status databases pertaining to these surveys. In addition experience has been attained in the utilisation of national surveys for exposure assessment requirements.
Dr Breige McNulty’s main research interests combine metabolic and public health nutrition. Her previous academic background focused on folate and related B-vitamins during pregnancy. Currently, she is focusing on using data from the national surveys to explore factors which influence iodine and iron intakes and status in the Irish population and also to study the relationship between genetics and obesity, wholegrain intake and metabolic health and dietary behaviours in relation to CVD. Furthermore, she has an interest in exposure assessment with a particular focus on additives and pesticide residues. She has had the opportunity to co-write and collaborate on a number of successful grants both nationally and internationally. She is a collaborator in a European funded grant Total Diet Study Exposure an FP7-funded collaborative project.
She has work with companies such as Danone, Cereal Partners Worldwide, Unilever and governmental agencies. She is an invited expert on the ILSI Addition of Nutrients Expert Group and the EFSA Network on Food Consumption Data committees within Europe. She is a member of the Joint Irish Nutri-genomics Organisation (JINGO) and the European Nutritional Phenotype Database Sharing Initiative within the Joint Programming Initiative (JINGO-JPI) and is the current secretary of the Irish section of the Nutrition Society.