Caroline Richard's research program will primarily focus on investigating the role of nutrition on immune function in the context of chronic diseases including obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Richard is also starting her role as Assistant Professor in Nutritional Immunology in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences.
Richard has developed a variety of expertise throughout her career related to cardiometabolic health, including common cardiovascular risk factors, the intravascular lipid metabolism and inflammation, and how weight loss improves all these components. Additional expertise also includes maternal-infant health and how dietary interventions impact the development of the immune system (programing effect).
The impact of targeted dietary nutritional intervention on the overall cardiometabolic health, but also the immune system (inflammation) in individuals with obesity and type 2 diabetes, will be the cornerstone of her research. Little is known about the impact of gestational diabetes on immunity and she is also interested in investigating the impact of gestational diabetes on the development of the infants' immune system and how nutritional intervention during pregnancy can favorably impact immune outcome later in life.