HAPPI: Harnessing AI for personalised nutrition to promote healthy ageing in older adults

HAPPI: Harnessing AI for personalised nutrition to promote healthy ageing in older adults

Undernutrition results in disability, loss of independence, and poor quality of life for older people.  Over 1.5 million older UK adults are undernourished costing the NHS billions each year. It is critical to support adequate nutrition for optimal health and well-being in the ageing population. Personalised nutrition holds transformative potential by tailoring dietary interventions to individual needs, but there is limited research in older adults who have unique requirements. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies offer an unprecedented opportunity to bridge this gap by enabling scalable interventions.  

In the ‘HAPPI’ project, the successful PhD student will develop AI personalised nutrition solutions to improve nutritional status and functional abilities in older adults. The student will learn and apply state-of the-art AI techniques to existing large-scale datasets to create personalised nutrition solutions that can reverse and/or prevent undernutrition and improve health and wellbeing. The student will gain experience of working with diverse older adults in the community to design and test a feasible Mobile App to support long-term dietary behaviour change.

The 4-year project provides an exciting opportunity to work with an Internationally recognized scientific team from Queen’s University Belfast to gain expertise in AI and translational public health nutrition and ageing research.  There will be several training opportunities to develop knowledge and skills on nutrition and ageing, behaviour change, machine learning and Mobile App development as well as analytical data analysis skills. There is also the opportunity for a short-term placement with Age NI who will actively contribute to the project.

Click here to access the application form