The primary focus of the Food Safety and Nutrition (FSN) grouping resides in fundamental and applied research linking key aspects of food production, food safety and security, animal and human nutrition and health, and consumer behaviour.  The group encompasses a wide range of expertise and technical skills across diverse fields including: advanced molecular biology and bioinformatics; cell biology signalling; microbiology; analytical chemistry; geochemistry; high level spectroscopy and spectrometry analysis; proteomic and metabolomic analysis; recombinant protein expression and peptide engineering; immunoassay and biosensor design; food chain traceability systems; risk perception and communication; animal and human nutrition; and food pathogen detection and control.

The work and research of the Food Safety and Nutrition (FSN) grouping is closely aligned to the Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) within QUB which aims to play a leading role in national and global efforts to provide the world's growing population with a sustainable, safe and secure supply of high quality food.

Professor Katrina Campbell
Antibody production, novel binders, biosensors and microarray diagnostics, natural toxins and chemical contaminants.

Dr Marie Cantwell
Links between dietary intake and cancer/risk progression.

Dr Cuong Cao
Micro- and nanotechnologies for detection and diagnostics.

Professor Aedin Cassidy
The impact of a range of plant bioactives, including flavonoids, on cardiometabolic health.

Professor Lisa Connolly
Endocrine disruptors, food chain and environmental contamination, toxicological analysis, mechanistic study, effects on mammalian health.

Professor Moira Dean
Food chain actors and consumer food choice behaviour, risk perception and communication, consumer and health.

Professor Chris Elliott
Detection and mitigation of accidental and deliberate contamination of the global food system.

Professor Seamus Fanning
Molecular microbiology, whole genome sequencing of pathogens of importance to food safety and public health, antimicrobial resistance, bacterial transcriptomics in low-moisture conditions.

Professor Brian Green
Metabolite (metabolomic) signatures of human disease, dietary metabolites, nutraceuticals, metabolic disease, neurodegenerative disease.

Professor Gary Hardiman
Computational biology approaches, multi-omics data integration, systems and network biology.

Dr Tassos Koidis
Food authenticity and fraud detection, food quality, vegetable oils and fats, emerging food technologies.

Professor Rudi Krska
Mycotoxins and other secondary metabolites of fungi, plants and bacteria.

Dr Tilman Kuhn
Nutritional epidemiology, preventive nutrition.

Dr Danielle McCarthy
Societal engagement, knowledge and trust in food production and its impact on educational and health outcomes.

Professor Andy Meharg
Biogeochemical cycling of trace element nutrients (iodine, selenium, copper, zinc etc.) and toxicants (arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury etc.) in agronomic systems.

Dr Caroline Meharg
Next-Generation Sequencing and the study of genomes/transcriptomes and their response to and interaction with the environment.

Professor Mark Mooney (Director of Research)
Profiling of in vivo responses to chemical and biological agents, development of metabolite and protein marker based detection and diagnosis screening platforms (mass spectrometric and biosensor), investigation of the effectiveness of new animal health (dietary and vaccine) strategies.

Dr Anne Nugent
Collection and utilisation of data to understand how foods can influence health and how this data can be used to underpin public health policy and guide product development.

Professor Niamh O'Connell
Farm animal behaviour and welfare.

Professor Helen Roche
Precision nutrition and nutrigenomic approaches.

Professor Saskia Van Ruth
Food integrity: risk management and prevention strategies; physics-based detection strategies; and foods and social corporate responsibility.

Professor Nigel Scollan
Animal agriculture and associated supply chains.

Dr Chen Situ
Food safety and security, chemical and drug residue contaminants, novel antimicrobials, natural products for human and animal health.

Dr Qiaozhu Su
Lipid species and nutrient compositions and their links to the development of metabolic diseases.

Dr Katerina Theodoridou
Animal nutrition, alternative animal feed sources.

Professor Lynn Vanhaecke
HRMS-based (untargeted) metabolomics, enclosing multi-component screening and enabling for instance biomarker studies, specifically designed to serve multiple applications with a particular focus on food intake and food-related Western diseases.

Dr Paul Williams
Soil and environmental biogeochemistry, chemical speciation of trace element (toxic and essential) uptake by plants, in situ environmental monitoring.

To find out more visit the The Institute for Global Food Security website.