Linda Tapsell

Professor Tapsell is well recognized in the field of Nutrition and Dietetics, a discipline of Medical and Health Sciences. After 15 years in the public health system, Professor Tapsell joined the University of Wollongong, her home for the next 30 years. A founding member of the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, she was instrumental in establishing the professional Nutrition and Dietetics programs, and later led the discipline into the new Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health. She is an inaugural Fellow of the Dietitians Australia (DA), a Fellow of the Nutrition Society of Australia, and an Emeritus Member of the American Society of Nutrition where she is recognized in the 2022 Class of Fellows. In 2015 she was awarded an Order of Australia (AM) for ‘significant service to health science as an academic and clinician specializing in diet and nutrition’. In 2022 she was awarded the Emeritus Professor honor by the University of Wollongong.
Building expert teams, Professor Tapsell has a strong track record in dietary trials addressing lifestyle and chronic disease risk. She championed developments in methodologies related to dietary assessment and to study designs addressing the concept of food synergy - integrating the positions of nutrients with foods and then dietary patterns. She lead over $15M in research funding from the NHMRC, ARC, food and agriculture research and development corporations and contract research. She has presented substantially to scientific conferences, produced over 250 publications in scientific journals, and is lead author/editor of the textbook Food, Nutrition and Health (Oxford University Press,2013; 2nd Edition 2019). With colleagues from Tufts University USA, she has served on the Editorial board of Nutrition Today for decades, and for 16 years was Editor in Chief of Nutrition and Dietetics (the journal of the DA; Wiley Publishers). Significantly, Professor Tapsell has educated and supported a generation of nutrition scientists, dietitians, academics and research fellows. She has supervised 25 PhD graduates, and they now extend their capacities in a variety of food and health related environments.
Dietetics is a relatively small and predominantly female profession within STEM, but it contributes substantively in research related to food and health. In her academic capacity, Professor Tapsell served as Director of the Australian Research Council Key Centre for Smart Foods and led the National Centre of Excellence in Functional Foods across the full term of federal funding. In addition, she served as a discipline expert for National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in grant review panels, the Australia India Strategic Research Fund, and the Medical and Health Sciences panel of Excellence in Research Australia (ERA). She has contributed significantly to nutrition research translation including a 2010 PMSEIC report, Australia and Food Security in a Changing World, the NHMRC/DoHA Australian Dietary Guidelines 2013, and the revisions of the Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) for Sodium (Australian Department of Health and New Zealand Ministry of Health). In 2019 she was honoured with the Excellence in Research Award from the International Nut Council (INC). At the University of Wollongong, she was an inaugural member of the University Education Committee, and served regularly on Faculty, Research, and Promotions committees. She was profiled in the UoW publications ‘40 years of Research Impact’ (2015), ‘Women of Impact’ (2016) and ‘Best Practice in HDR Supervision’ (2019).
Professor Tapsell is now an Emeritus Professor at the University of Wollongong. She continues with voluntary work in health and nutrition, currently serving on the FSANZ Consumer and Public Health Dialogue, providing advice on steering committees for food based research, chairing the Sodium Expert Working Group of the NRVs (under NHMRC), contributing to conferences, webinars and meetings, mentoring colleagues and co-supervising PhD students.