Dr Jennifer Miles-Chan

University of Auckland | Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Jennifer Miles-Chan is Director of the Human Nutrition Unit at the University of Auckland School of Biological Sciences; Australasia’s only long stay residential nutrition facility with the capability of conducting diet-controlled interventions in order to demonstrate cause and effect relationships between diet, health and disease. She is also Principal Investigator of the High Value Nutrition National Science Challenge’s Metabolic Health priority research programme and a member of the Challenge’s Science Leadership Team.

Jennifer is an integrative physiologist whose research is focused on nutritional energetics and the regulation of body composition. Her experience covers a diverse range of settings: including a solid background in pre-clinical models and molecular analyses, clinical intervention studies, and experience in more epidemiological-type investigations. Jennifer’s current research is focused on two broad areas: (i) deciphering inter-individual variability in energy balance, and how this relates to inequities in our risk for metabolic disease; and (ii) prevention and treatment of metabolic disease in “at risk” population groups, including overweight and obesity, metabolic dysregulation, and type 2 diabetes – in other words, identifying why some of us are more susceptible to obesity and metabolic disease than others, and how we might be able to tailor prevention and treatment strategies accordingly.