Why babies are born small Event as iCalendar

26 February 2014

6 - 7pm

Venue: Lecture Theatre 007, Building 505 Medical and Health Sciences Campus, 85 Park Rd Grafton

Host: Liggins Institute

Cost: no charge

cp-m-j-jarvelin

A public lecture by Visiting Seelye Fellow, Professor Marjo-Riitta Järvelin, Imperial College London

Professor Järvelin is Chair in Public Health and Lifecourse Epidemiology at Imperial College London with additional part-time professorships at the National Institute of Health and Welfare and at the University of Oulu, in Finland. In this lecture she will draw on data from two of the world’s largest longitudinal studies to show how interactions between genes and the environment shape early- and later-life health and disease risk.

She has been running large-scale population based studies for over 25 years, investigating the genetic and early life environmental origins of multi-factorial diseases/disorders in close collaboration with many internationally well-known institutions, groups and networks. She is a director of the widely acknowledged Northern Finland Birth Cohort (NFBC) Research Program, which includes around 20,000 subjects, born in 1966 and 1986. As a Director of Postgraduate Studies at the School of Public Health, Imperial College, she has an active role in training emerging researchers.

In 2006 she received an award of excellence in genetic epidemiology at Imperial College London and in 2012 she was honoured in Finland with the title Epidemiologist of the Year.

Her work links closely with research at the Liggins Institute, and other groups at the University of Auckland including the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study based at the School of Population Health, COMPASS (Department of Sociology) and Gravida: National Centre for Growth and Development. During her visit she will be advising on research directions and developing further collaborations.

Her visit is hosted by the Liggins Institute, made possible by the award of a Fellowship supported by the Ralph and Eve Seelye Charitable Trust and the late Dr Eve Seelye, with additional funding from the Liggins Institute Trust.