MRC Epidemiology UnitPhD Student
Nutritional Epidemiology
Current work and interests
Divya is a PhD student in the Nutritional Epidemiology programme under the supervision of Professor Nita Forouhi and Dr Jean Adams. Her research will quantify the consumption of ultra-processed foods and assess their associations with chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension and obesity, in South Asian countries.
Together with the Dietary Assessment team, Divya will also work on the adaptation, implementation and validation of a digital dietary assessment tool for South Asian populations.
Background and experience
Divya joined the MRC Epidemiology Unit in October 2017 as a research assistant in the Nutritional Epidemiology programme and the Global Diet and Activity Research Group and Network (GDAR). In this post, she worked on the Community food Production and Health project which focused on community-based food production initiatives in Small Island Developing States and their impacts on health, social and economic wellbeing. She also worked across a number of projects involving evidence reviews, development of quantitative data collection tools and dietary assessment to investigate the determinants of diet and health in the Pacific, Caribbean and Africa.
Divya completed her MSc in Nutrition for Global Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and gained entry to the UK Voluntary Register of Nutritionists as a Registered Associate Nutritionist, governed by the Association for Nutrition. Her MSc dissertation investigated the relationship between place of residence and health endpoints in the Indian population. She has a BSc. in Dietetics from SNDT University (Mumbai, India).