Professor of Diet and Population Health, University of Oxford

Dr Susan Jebb is Professor of Diet and Population Health at the University of Oxford. With 25 years experience in nutrition research, Susan now leads a team of scientists working across a range of public health nutrition issues, with particular emphasis on the translation of nutrition science into policy and practice. Susan is also very interested in how scientific evidence on diet is translated into policy and practice, by government, industry, the public health community and the media.

Her career began in nutrition and dietetics at the University of Surrey prior to her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where she studied methods to measure body composition. After post-doctoral research at the MRC Dunn Nutrition Unit into energy metabolism in cancer and HIV infection, she moved to HNR in 1998, where her research focuses on the role of dietary factors in the aetiology and treatment of obesity. It includes observational studies on dietary patterns and weight gain, explanatory dietary intervention studies and more pragmatic trials of community-based weight management strategies. She has strong scientific collaborations with the Behaviour and Health Research unit at the University of Cambridge and the MRC Human Nutrition Research unit, where she was a Programme Leader for many years.

Beyond her research programme Susan is the Science Advisor on obesity to the Department of Health in England and formerly chair of the cross-government Expert Advisory Group on Obesity in England. She is currently Chair of a NICE Programme Development Group developing guidance for the prevention of obesity at a community level and Chair of the Public Health Responsibility Deal Food Network. In 2008 she was awarded an OBE for services to public health. She regularly contributes to media features on food or obesity including several BBC documentaries. In a personal capacity, she writes a nutrition column for a popular magazine.