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Team
PAS GRAS is coordinated by the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and comprises a consortium of 16 partners across academia, industry, and non-profit associations from eight European countries
Coordinator
PARTNERS
MANAGEMENT BOARD
PAS GRAS’ highly qualified, multidisciplinary team is led by researchers at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) that compose the project’s Management Board.
Paulo J. Oliveira
Project coordinator
Principal investigator and vice-president of the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra (CNC-UC). Leader of the ‘Mitochondria, Metabolism and Disease’ group at CNC-UC. His research is focused on mitochondrial metabolism, addressing changes in mitochondrial function which can lead to cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and hepatic steatosis.
Anabela Marisa Azul
Project co-coordinator
Principal investigator at CNC-UC. Leader of the ‘Interdisciplinary Studies on Metabolism’ group, focused on the attributes of fungi for human and environmental health, human-nature interactions as determinants of health, and visual methods (such as comics) as research practice.
Eugénia Carvalho
Project co-coordinator
Lead researcher at CNC-UC. Her work focuses on the biology of fat cells and how it is related with the development of insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular disease in children and adults. Aims to disclose early mechanisms and responsible players for the inflammatory milieu in obesity.
Paulo Matafome
Project co-coordinator
Adjunct Professor at the Coimbra Health School, Polytechnic University of Coimbra. Principal investigator at the Coimbra Institute for Clinical and Biomedical Research of the University of Coimbra, where he leads the ‘NeuroEndocrinology of Obesity’ lab, focused on the mechanisms of adipose tissue dysfunction in obesity.
John Jones
Project co-coordinator
Lead researcher at CNC-UC, and member of the European NAFLD & Insulin resistance (EGIR) committee. His research focuses on alterations of metabolic fluxes in obesity and diabetes. He has developed MRI methods to evaluate the fluxes of glucose, fructose and lipid metabolism in order to better understand the contribution of the different nutrients to metabolic disorders.
External Advisory Board
PAS GRAS is further advised by a panel of international experts, that compose the project’s External Advisory Board
Elisabet Børsheim
Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Geriatrics (secondary) at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, USA. Her research focuses on maternal health during pregnancy, pediatric cardiometabolic health—particularly in relation to exercise and nutrition—and the prevention of metabolic disorders across the lifespan.
Philip Scherer
Professor and Director of the Touchstone Diabetes Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Throughout his career, he has maintained an interest in cellular and systemic energy homeostasis processes, with a particular focus on the adipocyte. His research group was the first to describe adiponectin and endotrophin, both of which are important secretory factors with broad physiological actions that are widely studied and currently studied by many different research groups.
Margarida Gaspar de Matos
Clinical and health psychologist. Full professor at the Portuguese Catholic University. Researcher and coordinator of several national and international projects in the field of health promotion for children and adolescents.
Casper Schalkwijk
Professor of Experimental Internal Medicine at Maastricht University Medical Center, the Netherlands. His main research themes are obesity, insulin resistance, vascular complications and endothelial function, studied in epidemiological setting and with experimental ex-vivo, animal, and cell work. Uses robust analytical techniques for measurements of biomarkers with multi-array technology, with FACS and with UPLC-MSMS. He has led several clinical studies. A major research line focuses particularly on non-enzymatic glycation.
Maria Kristiansen
Professor, Research Group Leader, Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen (UCPH). Her research is focused on prevention, person-centered treatment and rehabilitation across the life course with a particular mission to enhance equity in health and healthcare. Focus is on prevention and management of diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and multiple sclerosis.
Anita Bandrowski
Principal Investigator at the Research Resource Identification Initiative, University of California. Dr. Bandrowski focuses on improving rigor, transparency, and reproducibility in scientific research, with expertise in data standardization and resource identification. She leads the global adoption of RRIDs (unique identifiers for key biological resources) and co-founded SciScore, a tool that supports publishers in enhancing research reporting quality.
John Ioannidis
Former member 2023-2026
Professor of Medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University and Co-Director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS). Considered a pioneer in meta-research, his work focuses on improving research methods and practices, as well as enhancing approaches to integrating information and generating reliable evidence.
Peter Nathanielsz
Former member 2023-2026
Peter W. Nathanielsz has researched fetal development for over forty years and was recently named as one of the top 5% of funded NIH investigators in the United States. He was founding director of the Texas Pregnancy & Life-course Health Research Center and is now the Distinguished Research Professor of Life Course Studies within the UW College of Agriculture and Natural Resources´ Department of Animal Science.
The PAS GRAS team comprises dozens of skilled and committed professionals across Europe, involved in turning PAS GRAS’ vision into reality: a healthier population in Europe and beyond.