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Consumer Lab is one of six new innovation hubs part of the Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club. The hubs will address shared barriers to innovation across the food and drink sector.

From maximising the nutritional value of foods to better understanding what influences food choices and the relationship between food and health, these new innovation hubs will bring together world-class leaders from academia, industry and wider stakeholders to address these challenges.

Dr Lee Beniston FRSB, Associate Director for Industry Partnerships and Collaboration at BBSRC, said:

“The Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club is a new approach for BBSRC that will provide an open innovation platform for businesses, researchers and wider innovation and UK Government stakeholders to work together across six hubs focused on a range of diverse diet and health research and innovation priorities.

“Our partnership with Innovate UK, DEFRA and MRC greatly enhances what the programme can achieve whilst also providing a strong connectivity to national strategy and policy; all of this ultimately helping to deliver wider benefits to an industry that is a key part of the UK economy.”

Richard Hebdon, Director of Health and Life Sciences at Innovate UK, said:

Innovate UK’s investment in the BBSRC-led Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club supports our investment in the £20m Better Food for All programme.

“Together these programmes will provide funding to support strategic, collaborative research and development between businesses and researchers, policy makers and wider stakeholders in the important area of diet and health, helping to bridge the gap between research and translation.

“This is another fantastic investment that builds on Innovate UK’s strong strategic partnership with BBSRC to support collaboration between business and the UK research base.”

Dr Laura Dickens, Associate Director for Industry Partnerships at MRC, said:

“We are pleased to participate in this partnership supporting ambitious new research as part of our priorities to address important nutrition and health challenges and broaden our support for industry-academia partnerships.

“Establishing these innovation hubs will enable new research collaborations in this field to foster innovative approaches to solve an important public health issue that affects all of us. MRC support towards establishing the Brunstrom hub in particular will benefit underrepresented communities.”

Food Minister Mark Spencer said:

“I am delighted that scientists and experts can now come together in these new innovation hubs to convene the latest science around obesity and healthy eating.

“Together they can work to close the knowledge gaps between current dietary trends and obesity, whilst improving our understanding of the relationship between food and health.

“Supporting this research is part of our commitment in the Food Strategy to boost healthier, more sustainable and accessible diets.”

Innovation Hub Governance

The hub governance and management structures are represented in Figure 1. The hub will be led by Professor Jeff Brunstrom (PI; University of Bristol, UoB), , with Co-Is Professor Louise Dye (University of Leeds, UoL) and Dr Dani Ferriday (UoB), and by Dr David Mela, our independent Industry Co-Lead. Day-to-day operations will be supported by an Innovation Hub Manager, who will be embedded within the Impact Development Team in the UoB Division of Research, Enterprise and Innovation.

As indicated, members of the Executive Committee will also sit on the Advisory Panel, the Impact Account Panel, and the Hub Outreach Panel. This is to promote continuity of expertise and perspectives between the Panels and the Executive.

Figure 1

The Executive Committee

The Executive Committee are responsible for the Hub’s strategic direction, membership, activities, and outputs. All other hub panels report to the Executive Committee.

Jeff Brunstrom

Jeff Brunstrom was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham (UK). In 1999 he took a lectureship in the Department of Human Sciences at Loughborough University (UK) and in 2005 he moved to the University of Bristol (UK). His current position is Professor of Experimental Psychology. Jeff co-leads the Nutrition and Behaviour Unit in the School of Psychological Science. Major research themes include appetite, memory and cognition, expected satiety, dietary learning, eating behaviour, portion size, and food choice, and Jeff has published over 140 articles on these topics. Much of this work has relevance to the food industry and is related directly or indirectly to obesity, energy balance,  and metabolic health. Currently, his research is supported by awards from the BBSRC and NIHR.

Dani Ferriday

Dani Ferriday received her PhD from the University of Bristol and has remained at Bristol where she is now Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science. Dani has particular expertise in the assessment of beliefs about food, episodic memory, oral processing behaviours and understanding drivers of portion size in adults and children.

Louise Dye

Louise Dye was awarded a PhD from the University of Leeds in 1989. Her Royal Society postdoctoral fellowship took her to the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany and she returned to Germany as a Marie Curie Professorial Fellow at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in 2002. Louise is a Chartered Health Psychologist whose research focuses on the effects of nutrition (diet/food components) on cognitive function and decline, health and wellbeing. She was academic lead of the N8 Agrifood programme at University of Leeds and has developed a strong interest in how to encourage and sustain dietary behaviour change at individual, organisational and societal levels, linking to global issues of food production/supply, inequality and health in vulnerable populations e.g. children, ageing and food insecure people. Louise leads the Diet and Health priority area of the Global Food and Environment Institute at the University of Leeds. She chairs the BBSRC Strategic Advisory Panel for Biosciences for an Integrated Understanding of Health, served on the BBSRC Diet and Health Research Industry Club (DRINC) Steering Group and chaired the BBSRC Working Group on Neuroscience and Mental Health. Louise is past President of ILSI Europe and is current Co-Chair of ILSI Global. She is Associate Editor of Nutritional Neuroscience. She is leading a work package on increasing dietary fibre intake in low income consumers in the UKRI funded H3 project (www.h3.ac.uk) and is co-Chair of the health and wellbeing pillar of the Leeds Food Strategy for Leeds City Council.

Lisa Kehoe

Lisa Kehoe is the Head of Impact Development at the University of Bristol. Her team works with researchers to develop their ideas, find funding and identify external partners to create, commercialise and extend the impact of their research.
Lisa has a background working in the pharmaceutical industry and in strategy and policy development at the UK Research Councils. She is particularly interested in the policies and practices which grow organisational cultures for impact development and in the UK funding landscape that facilitates the development of impact from research.

Dave Mela

David Mela received his PhD in nutrition from Penn State University. Following an academic research career in the US (Monell Chemical Senses Center) and UK (Institute of Food Research), he worked at Unilever until his retirement in 2019. This background provided experience with a wide diversity of topics in nutrition, reflected in over 100 professional publications, mainly in the areas of sensory perception and food choice, appetite and eating behaviour, and energy and macronutrient metabolism. As a team manager and senior scientist in Unilever, David’s work focused on innovation research in eating behaviour, weight control and metabolic health, also providing scientific guidance on related business, technical and regulatory issues. David now works as an independent consultant, providing expert input to a range of academic, public health and trade organizations, including membership of the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition [SACN] since 2005. He is a Registered Nutritionist and Fellow of the Association for Nutrition.

Advisory Panel

The Advisory Panel will meet quarterly and will steer the scientific direction of the hub and the strategic allocation of the Impact Account funds.

Advisory Panel Members

Kourosh Ahmadi – University of Surrey
Jeff Brunstrom – University of Bristol
John Draper – Aberystwyth University
Louise Dye – University of Sheffield
Taro Takahashi – University of Bristol
Graham Finlayson – University of Leeds
Ciarán Forde – Wageningen University
Suzanne Higgs – University of Birmingham
Lisa Kehoe – University of Bristol
David Mela – Independent
Monique Raats – University of Surrey
Mike Smith – University of Bristol
Danielle Ferriday – University of Bristol
Charlotte Hardman – University of Liverpool

Impact Account Panel

The Impact Account Panel will be responsible for awarding funds through an annual call and for awarding funding for ECR training. This will involve rating applications, making funding decisions, and feeding back to applicants. The Impact Account Panel will also be empowered to request more frequent responsive calls, to convene sub-panels, and to draw on wider OIRC expertise.

Impact Account Panel Members

Danielle Ferriday – University of Bristol
Louise Dye – University of Sheffield
David Mela – Independent
Annika Flynn – University of Bristol
Alejandro Sanchez M – University of Bristol