The Institute of Food Research has appointed Professor Ian Charles as its new director and to lead the program to develop the UK’s new Centre for Food & Health to be based at the Norwich Research Park.
He returns to the UK from Australia where he is currently director of the ithree institute, University of Technology, Sydney.
Aimed to be the world-leading innovation hub for food and health research, the centre is said to have the potential to accelerate the development of innovative techniques to address global food and health issues, said Professor Charles.
The multidisciplinary centre aims to bring together the Institute of Food Research and aspects of the University of East Anglia’s Faculty of Science and the Norwich Medical School with the regional gastrointestinal endoscopy facility at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.
With an integration of diet, health, nutrition and medicine under one roof, linking closely to world class plant and crop research at the John Innes Centre and bioinformatics at The Genome Analysis Centre (both also located on the Norwich Research Park), it will have the potential to deliver clinically validated strategies to improve human health and wellbeing.
Funding for the Centre for Food & Health building has been committed from the Institute of Food Research, the University of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital together with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
Further funding is being sought from Government capital funds.
