Assoc ProfessorAifric O'Sullivan

Dr O’Sullivan’s research aims to understand interactions between genes, environment, diet and metabolism that define nutrition phenotypes across the lifespan, with a view to informing personalised, sustainable, healthy nutrition strategies.

Within this broad remit, one key research focus is vitamin D deficiency prevention. Recent and ongoing research projects are examining inter-individual responses to vitamin D supplementation and novel food-based strategies that will deliver sustainable improvements in vitamin D status in Ireland (NutriPlus and VitD-DPI).

Another critical research goal is to foster the transition to sustainable healthy diets (SuHeGuide, MyPlanetDiet and PLAN’EAT). This ongoing research will show the nutrition and health implications of changing dietary patterns to be more sustainable, as well as informing recommendations, tools and interventions that will support dietary behaviour change to sustainable healthy diet in Ireland and Europe.

Dr O'Sullivan leads a research team with experience across a range of nutrition study types (e.g. twin studies, postprandial studies, observational studies, randomised controlled trials), cohorts, (e.g. pregnant mothers, infants, children, adults, athletes, and older adults), dietary and clinical assessments (e.g. food records, dietary recalls, anthropometrics, DEXA, BodPod, strength and fitness assessments), biofluids (e.g, blood, urine, faeces, and saliva) and laboratory methods (e.g. ELISA, colorimetric assays, clinical chemistry analysers, DNA extraction, metabolomics).