PhD Student

Nutritional Epidemiology

Current work and interests

Lorenzo is a MRC-funded PhD student supervised by Professor Nita Forouhi.

Background and experience

Lorenzo completed a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds, including an industrial placement year as an Assistant Nutritionist at the Waitrose & Partners head office. He continued his studies at Leeds to complete a master’s degree (MSc) in Nutrition and gained entry to the UK Voluntary Register of Nutritionists as a Registered Associate Nutritionist, governed by the Association for Nutrition.

During his studies, Lorenzo developed a keen interest in nutritional epidemiology and completed research projects examining socio-economic dietary inequalities in the UK population (BSc dissertation), and whether there are causal relationships between vitamin D status and risk of COVID-19 infection and severity, using Mendelian randomisation (MSc dissertation). Prior to starting his PhD at the Unit, Lorenzo undertook formative training in epidemiology and biostatistics through a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree in Epidemiology at the University of Cambridge. His MPhil thesis focused on prospective associations between empirically derived dietary patterns and risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases in the EPIC-Norfolk cohort.