Members
Reader
Department of Women and Children’s Health, King’s College London
Sophie’s interest in Nutrition and Global Health research was initially driven by an undergraduate placement year spent with VSO in Tanzania, working with the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre. Following a PhD with the MRC’s Dunn Nutrition Unit in Cambridge and The Gambia, she then joined the MRC International Nutrition Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and, between 2006-12, she was Head of Station at the Keneba field station, MRC Unit The Gambia (MRCG). Following a further short spell at LSHTM, she joined MRC Human Nutrition Research in Cambridge, as Group Leader in Maternal and Child Nutrition, moving to the Department of Women and Children’s Health at KCL in September 2016.
Sophie’s current research focuses on mechanisms through which maternal, infant and childhood nutrition influence infant development and life-course health. Much of her current research remains based at in The Gambia, and she has also collaborated on projects in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Sophie is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at MRCG and an Honorary Associate Professor at LSHTM.
Research Associate
Department of Women and Children’s Health, King’s College London
Jessica completed her doctoral studies in the Human Nutrition Laboratory, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Her research focused on iodine nutrition from deficient to excessive intakes, using thyroglobulin as a novel biomarker to profile iodine status, and thyroid hormones to assess thyroid function. She has extensive experience of large, population-based field studies in infant to adult subjects, and in laboratory methods for the assessment of iodine status and thyroid function in biological samples. Jessica has collaborations with institutions in several LMICs, including Djibouti, The Gambia, Kenya, Morocco, The Philippines, and Tanzania. During her PhD, Jessica was also a visiting scientist at the Centre for Evidence Based Health Care, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and brings experience in rigorous Cochrane methodology.
Previously a UK-registered pharmacist, Jessica completed an international Master of Public Health at the French School of Public Health, following routine and emergency work with Médecins sans Frontières in Chad and D. R. Congo. She has also worked at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Health Division, and continues to collaborate on health economic analyses for nutrition interventions in LMICs with the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.
Administrator
Department of Women and Children’s Health, King’s College London
Jenny has many years of experience working as an administrator at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), most recently working with the MRC International Nutrition Group at LSHTM and MRC Unit, The Gambia.