Nutrition in Metabolic Diseases: Too-much or too-little?

Inaugural lecture: Professor Gyan Tripathi

We are living longer and, with improved medical care and living standards, our average life-span has increased across the world. However, our health has deteriorated across all ages and the burden of metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, has significantly increased and is reaching epidemic proportions. Why is obesity at the centre of it all? What is the role of fat cells and how are they linked to these diseases? Are we ourselves to blame or are there other factors at play? The lecture will consider the importance of nutrition and the role it plays in disease.

Professor Tripathi discusses his own research development, starting as a molecular biologist where he genetically engineered bacteria to produce biodegradable polymers and developing into a human researcher and determine how the experience has contributed to solving the fundamental mysteries of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Professor Gyan Tripathi

Professor Gyan Tripathi graduated with an MSc in Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India (1993) and completed his PhD in Biotechnology from the National Chemical Laboratory, India on a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Fellowship. He moved to the University of Aberdeen in 1999 as a postdoctoral fellow and studied transcriptional regulation in Candida albicans.

Between 2002 and 2005, he worked at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge and the University of Cambridge on IGF signalling in murine models and stem cell biology. He was appointed as RCUK Academic Fellow at the University of Warwick in 2005 where he developed his independent research in the area of obesity and obesity-related metabolic diseases and held the position of Associate Professor until 2016, later moving to the University of Westminster, London as Professor of Physiology. Professor Tripathi joined the University of Derby in April 2019 where he currently holds the position of Professor of Human Physiology and Head of Human Sciences Research Centre.