Ruairi Robertson

Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Research Fellow

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow focussing on the role of the gut microbiota in undernutrition. I graduated with a B.Sc in Human Nutrition from University College Dublin and a Ph.D in Microbiology and Nutrition from University College Cork, where I conducted my research within the APC Microbiome Institute. During this time I spent one year as a Fulbright Scholar working in Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston examining the influence of perinatal nutrition on gut microbiome development and metabolic health outcomes.

In 2017 I was awarded a 4-year Sir Henry Wellcome Research Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust to conduct Postdoctoral Research within the Centre for Genomics and Child Health at the Blizard Institute. My research, which is being conducted within the HOPE-SAM cohort, is examining the role of the gut microbiota in children with severe acute malnutrition and how this may contribute to long-term health outcomes. I am conducting longitudinal multi-omics analysis (metagenomics and metabolomics) to examine whether a disrupted gut microbiota in early-life may contribute to the long-term metabolic disturbances observed in both oedematous and non-oedematous malnutrition.