Dr Aoife Ryan's Biography
Aoife Ryan PhD RD, Lecturer in Nutritional Sciences, School of Food & Nutritional Sciences,
University College Cork
Aoife Ryan graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BSc in Human Nutrition and Dietetics in 1999 and was the recipient of a university gold medal. She later went on to complete her PhD in 2007 at the Department of Surgery. She then moved to New York and took up a faculty position as Assistant Professor of Nutrition at New York University until 2010. She is currently a Lecturer in Nutritional Science at University College Cork. Aoife is a Registered Dietitian and has 11 years of dietetics experience in both clinical research and acute care both in Ireland and the US. Her main interests are in the metabolic consequences of central obesity and how they relate to cancer risk. Aoife is also interested in modulation of the immune system and inflammation by nutritional means. While working as a PhD student Aoife was awarded research grants of half a million Euro. The first from the Health Research Board in Ireland was for a study she designed to examine the effect of central obesity and metabolic syndrome, on cancer stage and survival in oesophageal, colorectal and breast cancer, and the second grant she received from Abbott Laboratories to design and conduct a randomised double-blinded clinical trial with a tube feed enriched with Omega-3 fatty acids in the setting of major cancer surgery. This work attracted further funding from Abbott Laboratories in 2010 and in 2011 she was awarded a Health Research Award of 300,000 euro from the Health Research Board to extend this research in a multicentre setting. She has taught Nutrition at Trinity College Dublin and New York University to nursing, medical, public health and dietetic students, and has presented her research at several international scientific meetings. She is author of several peer reviewed publications as well as several articles for the general nursing and medical media.
