Sarah McNaughton

Professor McNaughton is Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics and Discipline Lead for Nutrition and Dietetics in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, University of Queensland. She is an Accredited Practising Dietitian, Fellow of Dietitians Australia and Fellow of Nutrition Society of Australia.

She has almost 30 years expertise in nutrition and dietetics and has published over 255 peer-reviewed papers (H-index=62). She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2003, and was subsequently appointed a Research Scientist in the MRC Centre for Human Nutrition Research (Cambridge, UK). She was employed at Deakin University from 2005 -2023. She has previously held nationally competitive fellowships from the ARC, Heart Foundation and NHMRC. She has received funding as a chief investigator on 28 externally funded project grants and tenders from NHMRC, ARC (Discovery, Linkage & LIEF), Heart Foundation, Diabetes Australia Research Trust, World Cancer Research Fund, the World Health Organisation, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, VicHealth and Federal Department of Health. She currently supervises 4 PhD students and has previoulsy supervised 16 PhD students to completion and 9 Honours students & 9 Masters students.

She leads a program of research that focuses on strengthening the evidence-base for public health nutrition strategies and interventions with a focus on epidemiological methods. She has particular interest in translation of evidence into guidelines and nutrition communication messages. Her research covers:

• Developing novel methods for measuring and interpreting population dietary intakes
• Understanding the role of foods, eating patterns and dietary patterns in health and wellbeing;
• Understanding dietary behaviors and their determinants across the life-course
• Understanding the role of food and nutrition literacy in dietary intake
• Translation of dietary patterns research into nutrition interventions, strategies and policy.

She has served on over 20 national and international committees and advisory groups including for the IARC, WHO, Australian Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance, NHMRC, Heart Foundation, Australian Academy of Science National Nutrition Committee and Nutrition Australia. In September 2021, she was appointed Chair of the NHMRC Australian Dietary Guidelines Expert Review Committee.