Prof. Warren McNabb

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PhD Massey University
Warren McNabb is Professor of Nutritional Sciences at the Riddet Institute. The Riddet Institute is one of New Zealand’s Centres of Research Excellence (CoRE) which is hosted by Massey University. His research interests include nutrition for health, sustainable nutrition, human-microbiome interactions, and physiology and metabolism.

Warren joined the Riddet Institute in 2016. Prior to that, Warren was the Research Director at AgResearch Ltd. He had been an Adjunct Professor in the Riddet Institute since 2009. Warren has previously supervised 18 PhD students and 12 Postdoctoral Fellows and is currently supervising 18 PhD students and 3 Postdoctoral Fellows.

Warren completed his B. Agric. Sci (First Class Honours; 1986) and PhD at Massey University. During his PhD studies Warren held William Georgetti, Leonard Connell, Pukehou Pouto and Massey University Postgraduate Scholarships. Warren did part of his PhD at the CSIRO, Division of Plant Industry (Canberra, Australia). His PhD (awarded in 1990) was followed by postdoctoral studies at the CSIRO, Plant Industry Division where he held a prestigious CSIRO Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (1990-1993). His PhD studies focused on the effect of condensed tannins on sulphur amino acid metabolism and wool growth in sheep. His postdoctoral studies focused on expressing genes for proteins that resisted rumen degradation and where high in sulphur amino acids in legumes of importance to pastoral agriculture.

Prior to joining Massey University, Warren joined AgResearch in 1993 as a Research Scientist and was promoted to Principal Research Scientist in 2004. Warren was promoted to Science Team Leader in 2000, Science Section Manager in 2005, General Manager in 2009 before becoming AgResearch’s Research Director in 2011. Warren has had science leadership roles in research programmes funded by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE), Riddet Institute CoRE, Marsden, the High-Value Nutrition (HVN) National Science Challenge, and New Zealand and international food industries. Warren chaired the groups that established the Our Land & Water National Science Challenge and the New Zealand Food Safety Science and Research Centre, and was part of the team that established the HVN National Science Challenge. Warren has chaired the Steering Group of the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (2011-2016) and been a Director of the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium (2011-2016), Pastoral Genomics (2009-2015) and HVN National Science Challenge (2014-2016).

At the Riddet Institute, Warren leads several programmes including the MBIE-funded programme New Zealand Milks Mean More and the Sustainable Nutrition Initiative (SNi; www.sustainablenutritioninitiative.com). Warren is also a Principle Investigator in the Riddet Institute CoRE Research programme (www.riddet.ac.nz/our-programmes) and an Associate Investigator in the HVN National Science Challenge (www.highvaluenutrition.co.nz) priority research programmes’, Healthy Digestion and Infant Health. His focus is on food structures-nutrient digestion interactions, clinical investigations of nutrition, microbe-human interactions, and gastrointestinal function. As part of these programmes, Warren is supervising 5 PhD students and one Postdoctoral Fellow.

Warren has published >140 peer-reviewed scientific papers with >6400 citations and an h-index of 42 (Scopus). Warren is also a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences (awarded 2007). Since 2019, Warren is an elected professional member of the New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology, American Society of Nutrition and the Canadian Nutrition Society, and has served on many national and international research advisory and funding panels.