Dr. Vimal Karani
Assistant Professor in Nutrigenetics
Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition, Institute for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Research, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AP, UK
Dr Vimal Karani is an Assistant Professor in Nutrigenetics at the University of Reading, UK. He also holds an honorary position as a Lecturer in Genetic Epidemiology at the University College London, UK. He did his post-doctoral training at the MRC Epidemiology unit (Cambridge, UK) and senior research fellowship at the University College London (UK). He has received advanced training in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. He has an interdisciplinary academic background, with qualifications from Medical Genetics, Bioinformatics, Molecular Biology and Genetic Epidemiology.
He has published extensively in areas related to nutrition and non-communicable diseases and presently has more than 60 peer reviewed publications (including those in premier biomedical journals: Nature Genetics, Lancet, BMJ, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Genetics, and American Journal of Clinical Nutrition). His publications can be found at the following link: https://www.reading.ac.uk/food/about/staff/v-karani.aspx. He has received significant global media attention for his work on nutrition, lifestyle and cardiometabolic diseases. He has received funds from various funding bodies such as British Nutrition Foundation, British Heart Foundation, National Health and Medical Research Council, The British Council, Newton Fund, Rank Prize Funds Nutrition Committee award and the Nutrition Society.
His primary research interests focus on the investigation of gene-nutrient interactions on metabolic- and CVD-related outcomes using combined approaches from genetic epidemiology, statistical genetics and molecular biology. His long term goal is to use the findings from observational studies to carry out human intervention studies with a view towards developing industrial collaborations to facilitate ‘Personalized Nutrition’. He is also a lead study coordinator of a large international collaboration (D-CarDia Collaboration), where he focuses on establishing the causal relationship between 25-hydroxyvitamin D and cardiovascular disease-related outcomes using Mendelian Randomization analysis.
Contact: v.karani@reading.ac.uk
Mr. Isanka P. Gamage