Human Nutrition

Topics covered:

• Fat’ body composition. 
• Appetite regulation and GI tract.
• What is a healthy diet?  (Healthy eating guidelines and evidence behind them).
• RCTs in nutritional research: basic principles and challenges
• Public Health Nutrition – research to policy
• Meta-analyses in nutritional research: introduction to basic principles, diet and cancer (WCRF)
• Nutritional Epidemiology (and flipped session)
• Introduction to dietary assessment
• Introduction to practical session using dietary assessment methods (Dietplan)
• Practical session: taking a 24 hour recall
• Practical session: Dietplan analysis
• Body composition: theory of measurement methods
• Energy expenditure / energy balance: theory and practice
• Measuring Body Composition – practical session: anthropometric measurements
• Data analyses – inter and intra measurement error assessment. 
• Appetite regulation: fMRI
• Undernutrition workshop (MUST screening tool)
• Nutrition through the lifecourse- early stages (pre-conception to childhood)
• Changing diet: behaviour change – key concepts
• New advances in nutrition research: metabolomics: assessment of dietary patterns using metabolic profiling
• Appetite regulation: brain

Final timetable to be confirmed prior to the course

The MRes programme is designed primarily for those with a Clinical or Biomedical background, including Healthcare Professionals.

Introduction / Purpose and Background

The primary objective of the programme is to provide a broad training in and practical experience of designing, implementing, and reporting clinical studies, with the majority of graduates going on to undertake PhD degrees in relevant fields, and other graduates have gone on to work in research and clinical settings as well as Industry.

Link to programme web pages: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/medicine/clinical-research/

A range of learning approaches including team work, e-learning and problem based learning are deployed, with active teaching and learning forming a large proportion of taught activities. Breaks between block modules provides students with space for reflection, integration of concepts e.g. application to their research project, and open-ended problems, for example working on the e-learning based module ‘critical appraisal’.

As this is an MRes programme, the focus is on research, with the research project allowing you to implement essential research skills supported by your supervisor(s). Project options are provided by staff, however, if you have a particular topic in mind this can also be considered. The key criteria are that:

• the research question is examined using appropriate design and methodology
• the project is feasible given available time-scales, and
• the scope and depth are sufficient for Master’s level study

 Course Aims

The aims and learning outcomes of the programme are to allow students to:

1. Utilise innovative technologies in specific areas of clinical research and explain concepts, theories and developments that underpin novel clinical investigation.

2. Apply and justify regulations, including clinical governance and ethics, in the context of clinical research.  

3. Formulate hypotheses and research methodologies by applying the principles that govern research design.

4. Interpret and critically analyse data and information from a wide range of sources using relevant computational tools and packages.

5. Communicate advanced scientific concepts and evidence in a variety of formats

6. Work as part of a team to apply creative solutions and critical thinking to complex clinical problems. 

 7. Develop, implement, troubleshoot and organise a substantial programme of original research in a clinical context.

8. Perform measurement and analysis techniques using appropriate laboratory and clinical methods in a clinical research setting.

 9. Retrieve, manage, analyse and integrate complex scientific information into a specific research area. 

10. Generate novel experimental data and critically appraise their quality and importance in the field of clinical research. 

11. Independently defend novel research findings in the context of the wider literature. 

Course Methods

The course consists of 5 modules given as lectures and hands-on practical sessions. Students undertake 4 compulsory modules (Research Conduct & Clinical Research Measures, Clinical Research Scenarios, Critical Appraisal, Research Project) and one speciality module (either *Human Nutrition, *Diabetes and Obesity, Translational Medicine) depending on the pathway.