Nutrition Society Silver Medal

Associate Professor Mario Siervo, Nottingham University

Hello readers of The Nutrition Society Gazette! I am the fortunate recipient of the 2021 Nutrition Society Silver Medal and I welcome this opportunity to share with you some meaningful steps in my academic career which have contributed to obtaining this prestigious award.

I am originally from a small village in South of Italy called Teggiano, not far from where the famous physiologist Ancel Keys, one of the first promoters of the Mediterranean diet, used to spend his holidays. I studied Medicine and completed my specialty training in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Medicine at the University Federico II in Naples. In 2002, I moved to the UK to attend the MSc in Public Health Nutrition at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

From 2004 to 2011 I was a research scientist at the MRC Human Nutrition Research Centre in Cambridge. In 2006, I started a part-time PhD focussed on the application of stable isotopes for the measurement of nitric oxide in humans before moving to the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC to work in the mathematical modelling and metabolic physiology group. In 2012 I returned to the UK to take my first tenured post as Lecturer in Nutrition and Ageing at Newcastle University.

The time in Newcastle was very productive. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer, published over 100 papers and was recipient of the British Nutrition Foundation Drummond Pump Priming Award in 2013 and Nutrition Society Julie Wallace award in 2017. In 2019, I joined the University of Nottingham as an Associate Professor in Integrative Physiology and Experimental Medicine and developed new research ideas around the adoption of deep-phenotyping approaches using stable isotopic and imaging methods to investigate the physiological roles of tissue nitrate stores and effects on dietary nitrate on brain function.

I always looked with admiration at the Society’s awards and the list of renowned winners; imagining a day when I could compete for such prestigious awards. That aspiration has been instrumental throughout my career to drive my research ideas and efforts and I am incredibly honoured to have won the 2021 Nutrition Society Silver Medal.