Rebecca Raj M.Phil, MSc, PhD

Dr. Rebecca Kuriyan Raj has over 30 years of experience in clinical nutrition, nutrition research, and academics. Her main research areas include infant, child, and adolescent health, body composition, and energy expenditure. Currently, she is examining the longitudinal trends in the growth and body composition of infants at birth and during the early years of life. Having established a cohort of 10,000 urban school children and measuring body composition in them, the findings of these studies have developed waist and body composition percentiles curves for the first time in South Indian Children. She and her colleagues have built a state-of-the-art whole-body potassium counter for estimating body cell mass in humans, with financial assistance from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. This facility, the only one in Asia has the potential to address many important research issues in clinical research and public health. The Division of Nutrition is the collaborating center of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the UN Agency for Stable isotopic research in nutrition, and Dr. Kuriyan and team are developing methods for the estimation of body composition in infants and children using stable isotopes.

Dr. Rebecca has always been committed to mentoring students and has mentored several nutrition and medical students from St. John’s Medical College and Hospital in their research work. She has been the course director for a 2-week short-term course in International Nutrition Research Methods since 2010, which is a part of the Bangalore Boston Nutrition Collaborative (BBNC). The main purpose of the BBNC is to improve the state of public health in India by training a new generation of Indian scientists and physician researchers in the field of nutrition. The BBNC has trained over 600 students since 2010.

She is a recognized Ph.D. guide for two Indian universities and is currently mentoring 4 students in their doctoral work. As the head of the clinical nutrition unit, she is actively involved in providing medical nutrition therapy for infants, children, and adults with different medical problems. The clinical nutrition unit, of St. John’s Medical College Hospital, is a recognized training center for the registered dietician course and is actively involved in training dieticians in patient care.