A data science approach to nutrition and lifestyle research
Dr Michelle Morris @ University of Leeds
Welcome to my Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics website.
I want to share with you what is new and possible in lifestyle research through unlocking novel forms of data. The potential is huge!
On a personal level, I love to be active – walking, running, cycling, sometimes to the extreme! My love of activity is matched by my love of food – cooking from scratch, trying new things and achieving a healthy balance.
It feels like a gift to be able to use my data science skills to unlock diet and activity insights at a population scale to help make healthy and sustainable choices easy for more people.
This is a new approach in lifestyle research, which has traditionally involved interviews or surveys to collect information about lifestyle, limiting the scale and timeliness of any insights generated.
In an era of data deluge, information about what and when we eat, and how and where we move, is being generated almost constantly. These data should be harnessed in a responsible and ethical way to help understand lifestyle behaviours and their drivers so that we can help to make healthier and sustainable choices the easy choices.
It is important that access to a healthy and sustainable lifestyle is possible for everyone, therefore I am particularly interested in the social and spatial variations in nutrition and lifestyle behaviours.
Please take some time to explore this site. Why not start with the recent blog posts below….
Michelle
Recent blog posts
Free School Meals through a local lens – Bradford
Alex Dalton and Tom Albone are part of our Data Scientist Internship Programme – and the Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics team – their work focusses on the power of Data for Public Good. The shared focus of their intern projects is inequalities in the local Bradford area, and one of the pressing local issues affecting this…
Free School Meals: a National Necessity
Alex Dalton and Tom Albone are part of our Data Scientist Internship Programme – and the Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics Team – their work focusses on the power of Data for Public Good. The shared focus of their intern projects is inequalities in the local Bradford area, and one of the pressing local issues affecting this…
Reflections on the dietary impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown period
This post is thanks to Vicki Jenneson, Postgraduate researcher in the Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics team. Vicki Jenneson – ANutr, MPH, MSc, Nutrition PhD Researcher in LIDA (fs10vl@leeds.ac.uk) The closure of cafés, restaurants and work canteens during lockdown has imposed a significant change on the nation’s eating habits, with many of us now consuming all…
About Us
Dr Michelle Morris is a data scientist with a passion to use data to understand nutrition and lifestyle behaviours. She leads a team at the University of Leeds, based in the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics.
Drop By
Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, Worsley Building, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
- Free School Meals through a local lens – Bradford
- Free School Meals: a National Necessity
- Reflections on the dietary impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown period
- What can tweets about contact tracing apps tell us about attitudes towards data sharing for public health? (Part 1)
- What do university students eat?
Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics for Health 