Andrew M. Prentice
Born and bred in East Africa, Andrew Prentice has subsequently spent his entire career working on the challenges of improving maternal and child nutrition in low-income countries. He leads a large team working out of a remarkable rural fieldstation at MRC Keneba, in The Gambia. He also has major collaborations with studies in Kenya, Tanzania, Bangladesh, and India. His group’s mission is “to gain novel insights into the basic mechanisms linking diet and disease in order to develop more effective community and clinical interventions.”
Prentice has special interests in iron, infection, and anemia and in the effects of maternal micronutrient status at the time of conception on the baby’s epigenome and how this impacts upon its development and future health.
His work has been recognized by a number of national and international awards including the Peter-Debye International Science Prize, the FENS Medal, the BNF Science Prize, the Gunnar-Levin Medal and Edna & Robert Langholtz International Nutrition Award, the Kellogg’s Science Prize, the EV McCollum International Lectureship and the IACON/SENC Award. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2013.
Prentice has been a member of numerous national and international advisory boards for nutrition policy as well as playing leading roles in academic societies in the UK and US. He is a Council Member for the International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS).
He trained in biochemistry at the University of Leeds and obtained his Ph.D. in Nutrition at the University of Cambridge.
