The University of Aberdeen has appointed Professor Julian Griffin as the new Director of the Rowett Institute.
Professor Griffin will take over the role from Professor Peter Morgan, who has been Director of the Institute since 1999.
Professor Griffin received his DPhil. in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford followed by postdoc positions at Harvard and Imperial College. At Imperial College he began to study the new field of metabolomics, which is still his area of expertise and interest. He is particularly interested in why certain types of fats are bad for the cell and how this contributes to diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and fatty liver disease.
While at Imperial College, Professor Griffin was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, before setting up his own research group at the University of Cambridge in 2002. He became a programme leader in human nutrition research at the MRC Human Nutrition/University of Cambridge in 2011.
In 2019 he was appointed Chair of Biological Chemistry at Imperial College London.
Professor Griffin said: “It is a huge honour to be the next Director of the Rowett Institute, both in terms of the history associated with the Institute and its impact on nutrition science, but also its future directions in terms of understanding how food and nutrition protect our health. I am looking forward to joining colleagues at the University of Aberdeen this summer as well as meeting the Institute’s partners and collaborators.”
Professor Griffin will take up the post on July 1.