Keynote Speakers

Melody Ding

University of Sydney

Physical activity measurement and equity: What are the links?

Melody Ding is a Professor of Epidemiology and Behavioral Science at the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health. Her research spans a diverse yet interconnected range of public health topics, including physical activity, social well-being, behavioral epidemiology, and chronic disease prevention. Ding spearheaded the influential 2016 and 2021 Lancet Series on Physical Activity and is a passionate advocate for equitable access to active lifestyles. Her current work employs causal inference methods to strengthen the evidence base in chronic disease epidemiology and applies systems approaches to address major public health challenges, particularly physical inactivity.

View Website

Aiden Doherty

University of Oxford

Insights from wearable sensing at scale in large-scale international biobanks

Aiden Doherty is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Oxford. His team of approximately 20 researchers develop reproducible methods to analyse wearable sensor data in very large health studies to better understand the causes and consequences of disease.

Dr. Doherty will discuss the story behind the collection of wearable sensor data in over 150,000 research participants across the UK and China, while also describing efforts to collect complementary open human activity recognition validation datasets to further enhance these resources. He will share the development of machine learning methods for sleep, sedentary behaviour, physical activity behaviours and steps, referring to open software tools and data resources of relevance.

View Website

Marian L Neuhouser

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Evolution in and key directions for advancing dietary assessment methods

Marian L Neuhouser is Professor and Program Head of the Cancer Prevention Program, Division of Public Health Sciences at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Dr. Neuhouser’s NIH- and USDA-funded research focuses on: (1) dietary modification trials for cancer prevention and survivorship; (2) short-term interventions to delineate the role of foods and dietary patterns on human metabolism; and (3) methodologic research including dietary biomarker discovery to improve dietary assessment.

View Website

Dr. Juan Rivera

National Institute of Public Health

Collecting and applying dietary intake data in an upper-middle income context

Dr. Juan Rivera is an emeritus researcher at the National Institute of Public Health and professor at the School of Public Health of Mexico. Formerly the general director of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico, he founded and directed the Centre for Nutrition and Health Research for 15 years. Dr. Rivera’s research interests include the epidemiology of poor nutrition and the generation of evidence to inform policy for the prevention of obesity and non-communicable diseases.

View Website