Dr Geraldine Cuskelly is a Lecturer in Nutrition in the Department of Sport and Health Sciences in AIT. She is also a Registered Nutritionist with the UK Association for Nutrition and a Registered Dietitian with the UK HPC. Geraldine has a BSc in Nutrition & Dietetics from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD in Nutrition from University of Ulster. Her research career begun at a time when intakes of folate, one of the B vitamins, was widely believed could be met through means other than fortification. Her research proved definitively that fortification was the only effective means to achieve adequate intakes in women. Since this ground-breaking research was published, numerous countries have implemented folic acid fortification, including; US, Canada, Chile and 72 other countries. Since then, Geraldine has worked in England, United States and Northern Ireland in both academic and food industry posts. She has published in high impact medical and nutrition journals, including the Lancet and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. She has been awarded funding to the value of almost €2m to conduct research with partners from UK and US. She has supervised Postdoctoral Fellows and PhD students in Northern Ireland on subjects ranging from B vitamin status in the elderly; omega-3 fatty acid status from meat consumption; and measurement of biomarkers of both carcinogen and food processing residue exposure. She has conducted this research using dietary surveys and interventions in collaboration with analytical chemists, epidemiologists, food scientists and medical researchers. Her currents areas of interest continue to use her expertise in examining biomarkers of nutrient status as they relate to chronic disease risk and she has a particular interest in how patterns of eating effect sodium status and blood pressure and how they can be altered to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.