Lisette de Groot
Prof Lisette de Groot, PhD is Professor in ‘Nutrition and Ageing, with due attention for older adults’ at Wageningen University & Research ("WUR") (Division Nutrition and Health – Nutritional Biology Group). WUR is the only University in the Netherlands that focusses specifically on healthy foods (diets, nutrition) and the environment in view of its mission ‘To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life’.
Professor de Groot was trained in nutrition, physiology and epidemiology and is one of the founders of the Research line on Nutrition and aging at WUR, currently ascertained a major theme of the Nutritional Biology Programme. By now she has gained over thirty years of research experience in the field of nutrition and health of elderly people, both in epidemiology and in intervention studies in old age.
Her research aims to identify dietary strategies that optimize nutritional health status to slow down or reverse stages preceding ageing related pathologies (cognitive decline, sarcopenia, osteoporosis) as to preserve functional health and quality of life. Currently her focus on the elderly is extended to ageing as a lifelong process for using molecular epidemiology, genetics, cell biology and integrating nutrigenomics in human interventions.