Prof. Ellen Blaak is Professor of Human Biology at the Department of Human Biology since 2007 and is Chair of the Department of Human Biology. Her research focuses on the role of disturbances in fatty acid metabolism and interorgan cross-talk (gut-adipose tissue-muscle metabolism) in the aetiology of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (>300 publ) as well as the impact of nutritional or lifestyle intervention to reverse these changes. Beside being professor at Maastricht University, she is project leader within the Top Institute Food and Nutrition, a public-private partnership of academia and international Food Industry, focussed on precompetitive research. She is member of the Nutrition committee of the Dutch Health Council and of several advisory board/grant evaluation committees. She obtained funding from among others the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific research/Dutch Diabetes Research Foundation/EU as a PI for 30 research projects and has supervised more than 30PhD theses.

About the lecture:
A considerable proportion of individuals does not show clinically relevant improvements upon a dietary intervention. These differential responses to diet may be explained by inter-individual heterogeneity in both exogenous and endogenous factors such as sex, dietary habits, gut microbiota composition and metabolic phenotype. In this presentation the focus will be findings that precision nutrition based on metabolic phenotype may increase the effectiveness of interventions.