Biography

I studied for a degree in Nutrition as I wanted to help people improve their diets to maintain good health and prevent non-communicable diseases driven by diet and lifestyle. When I worked as a community nutritionist in Malaysia, I learnt that commercial approaches in nutrition, while having their advantages, have their limitations when it comes to improving population health. This sparked my academic interest in Epidemiology, where population-based data is used to investigate the determinants of health and disease to develop population-level preventive strategies. Previously, I have worked on Nutritional Epidemiology projects on ultra-processed foods and obesity, sugar-sweetened beverages and stature loss, as well as vegetarian diets and cancer risk at King's College London, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford, respectively. My PhD research at the MRC Epidemiology Unit will investigate the dietary factors linked to type 2 diabetes with a focus on multi-ethnic Asian populations. Ultimately, I want to work in epidemiology research in Southeast Asia, where I come from, as it is a highly populated and ethnically diverse region that is underrepresented in the scientific literature. I hope that my work could support the development of region-specific population health interventions in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Population Health Sciences 2022
King's College London (University of London) Nutrition 2021

Links

https://www.mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk/people/jia-yi-lee
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiayilee706