The award provides newly-appointed research fellows or university lecturers who specialise in human nutrition with a research grant of £5000, which is used to undertake pilot work to collect data for a future major grant application.

Dr Markey’s grant will go towards her work exploring the inflammatory responses of adipose (fat) tissue to different types of dietary fat when individuals are in a non-fasting state.

Of the award, Dr Markey from the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, commented: “I am very grateful to receive this BNF Drummond Pump Priming Award.

“The funding will support me in obtaining preliminary data for larger scale research activity aimed at exploring interactions between functional foods and adipose tissue inflammation for heart disease risk reduction.”

The grant has been provided through the Drummond Memorial Fund, established in 1954 in memory of the work and contribution of Sir Jack Drummond, who significantly contributed to developments in nutrition science for public health.

University of Bedfordshire researcher, Rebecca Jones, was announced as the other recipient of the award this year.

Sara Stanner, BNF’s Science Director, added: “We are so pleased to once again offer the Pump Priming grants to two rising stars in the field of nutrition.

“Every year we receive so many interesting and worthy applications, making the selection process really tough. Applications are reviewed both internally by BNF and externally by selected members of the BNF Council, and in the end the ideas of these two research fellows in particular stood out for us all.”

Dr Oonagh Markey will be presented with her award on Tuesday 20 November at the BNF Annual Day in London.

The research Dr Markey will be conducting requires participants. Those who are interested in volunteering can find out more information by emailing Oonagh at o.markey@lboro.ac.uk.