Board

Director, FOODplus Research Centre, The University of Adelaide

Robert A Gibson, Senior NHMRC Research Fellow, Fellow of the Nutrition Society and Professor, Food Science and Nutrition, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, University of Adelaide.

Prof Gibson has been actively involved in nutrition research in cells, animals and humans for over 25 years and has published over 200 papers in this area. He has designed and conducted many randomised controlled trials involving nutrition interventions in the perinatal period. The trials were designed to test the effects of interventions with iron, selenium, probiotics, nucleotides and long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) on infant biochemistry, growth, physiology and developmental outcome. Two human trials have recently been published in JAMA – DINO: a National DHA-dose response study on mental development in 650 preterm infants and DOMInO: a National DHA in pregnancy study on postnatal depression and child development in 2500 women/infants. Bob was appointed Chair of WAS in 2010.

Associate Professor James Stangoulis has an academic appointment at Flinders University and his area of expertise is in field and lab- based plant nutrition. His research aims to elucidate the mechanisms of improved Fe and Zn nutrition in staple food grains and the link between crop nutrition and human health. He has identified a physiological mechanism for boron tolerance in wheat, andrecently identified the genetic link between phytate and micronutrients in rice grain. More recently, James has been looking at the retention of fructan and arabinoxylan (both prebiotics) after cooking and is working with collaborators to measure the effects of prebiotics on Fe absorption and SCFA synthesis in animal models. James also heads a micronutrient technical expertise project to support international efforts to improve the Fe and Zn nutrition of staple food crops. This effort is supported by HarvestPlus. James has been on the board of WAS from 2005.

(http://www.harvestplus.org/).

Selected publications list

Teresa has been Manager of WAS since 1997 and is the contact person for inquiries. Teresa has been with WAS since its inception, her focus on customer service and desire to produce high quality, timely results has beena driving force in WAS’ development. Teresa tries to keep all the people happy all of the time and will negotiate turnaround times to meet client timeframes.

Teresa brings to the Management Team a hands-on knowledge of day-to-day issues of maintaining high quality outputs, an understanding of WAS customer requirements, a passion to continue to improve the service that WAS provides, and belief that high quality elemental analysis is an essential tool in the battle the world faces to feed its ever-expanding population, while minimising the environmental effects of over-fertilisation.

Lyndon Palmer is WAS’s analytical chemist. He has been a part of the team since 1998 and is responsible for the high quality of analytical outputs. His areas of analytical expertise, gained over 33 years of experience, cover a wide range of fields including agriculture, health/biomedical, environment, forensic and food analysis. In the past few years he has worked as a part of the HarvestPlus Capacity Building Program which has helped strategic laboratories in India, China, Mexico and Nigeria to improve the quality of laboratory processes to ensure reliable data is produced for HarvestPlus nutrition projects.

Lyndon brings to the Management Team a hands-on knowledge of the day-to-day issues of maintaining a high quality laboratory, an understanding of the technical issues that need to be taken into account when developing future directions and a desire to continue to improve the service that WAS provides to its customers.