Professor Louise Dye

Profile

Louise Dye is the N8 Chair and Professor of Nutrition and Behaviour in the University of Leeds Human Appetite Research Unit, based in the School of Psychology, University of Leeds. She is also the academic lead for the N8 Agrifood Programme at the University of Leeds and with Professor Steven Banwart, she leads the Food Theme at Leeds. She is a biological psychologist who studies the effects of diet/food intake on cognition and health. Following a PhD in Human Psychopharmacology from the University of Leeds, she has accumulated more than two decades of experience in the assessment of cognitive function following nutritional and pharmacological intervention. She has held MRC and Royal Society Postdoctoral Fellowships in the UK and Europe and an EU funded Marie Curie Professorial Fellowship in Jena, Germany and was Visiting Professor at the Karolinska Institut and the University of South Australia. Professor Dye is a Chartered Health Psychologist and British Psychological Society member. She is section Editor (Diet and Cognition) for the European Journal of Nutrition and Associate Editor for Nutritional Neuroscience.

Responsibilities

• N8 Agrifood Chair of Nutrition & Behaviour
• Academic Lead - N8 Agrifood Programme
• Food Theme Co-Lead

Research interests

In her N8 role, Louise is interested in how to encourage and sustain dietary behaviour change at individual, organisational and societal levels, linking to global issues of food production/supply, inequality and health. Her particular expertise is the effects of food and food components on cognitive performance, digestive function and appetite control including in altered metabolic states such as obesity and type 2diabetes, dementia as well as genetic disorders such as PKU and Cystic Fibrosis. Louise has published a number of influential systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the effects of breakfast on academic, cognitive and behavioural outcomes in children and adolescents, iron deficiency/supplementation and cognition in children and young women, and studies on the effects of different food components (e.g. polyphenols) to maintain mental performance and prevent cognitive decline. She currently sits on the BBSRC Biosciences for Health Strategic Advisory Panel, the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). scientific advisory board and five of its expert groups, including natural ingredients for mental performance. She is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the FP7 project “PREVIEW” which is aimed at the prevention of type 2 diabetes. She is collaborating on a WUN project on diet and dementia in the townships of the Eastern and Western Cape, South Africa.

  Professor Louise Dye's research in The Human Appetite Research Unit (HARU) directly addresses major issues of concern to society, the impact of food on health in terms of cognitive function and wellbeing and also appetite/satiety, body weight control and obesity. Louise’s research focuses on key concerns of the food industry and government, specifically the evaluation of food and food components and their effects on appetite control, cognitive function and well-being. There are few research groups in the world who are able to examine the effects of food on appetite control concurrently with glycaemic response and cognitive function. This places her research partnership with Dr Clare Lawton in a unique position with clear knowledge transfer opportunities. With colleagues in the NHS, Louise is examining cognition and diet in relation to phenylketonuria, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, obesity, PCOS and infertility. 

With colleagues in FBS, Louise is researching the effect of nutrition on behaviour, well-being and cognition in pigs. She collaborates across the N8 Agrifood programme with projects related to food insecurity, psychological stress and obesity/malnutrition in children and the elderly and on global challenges research in Argentina and across the world (e.g. Breakfast study with Dr Patricio Kenny, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Buenas Aires) .

Qualifications

• BSc Human Psychology
• PhD Psychology
• Certificate of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education
• CPsychol.

Professional memberships

• BPS (Health, Psychobiology)
• ASO
• SRIP

Student education

Louise has taught at all levels of the undergraduate programme in Psychology during her time at Leeds, including research methods and advanced statistics, biological psychology, abnormal and clinical psychology as well as specialist modules in her own area of expertise, for example Reproductive Psychology and Cognition and Nutrition. She also contributes to the level 3 module Approaches to Nutrition and Behaviour. At Masters level, Louise has taught Advanced Research Methods and Theory and Intervention in Food and Health and has supervised many students writing systematic research reviews, many of which have resulted in well-cited publications. Louise has supervised undergraduate and masters research dissertations. She has taught on the DClinPsy programme and supervised DClin doctoral theses.