Description

Welcome to the lecture Dr. Eugenia Maku Demuyakor. She is Jury member of the PhD of Befikadu Tariku Gutema (Supervisors Prof. Stefaan De Henauw and Prof. Souheila Abbeddou).

Topic: The public lecture will be presented by the guest speaker, Dr. Maku Demuyakor, focusing on her research regarding the effects of prenatal and postnatal lipid-based nutrient supplementation on the cognitive, socio-emotional, and motor functions in preschool-aged children. Neurodevelopmental processes occur rapidly during gestation and the first 2 years of life. Adequate nutrition is important to support these processes and for the long-term development of cognitive, motor, and social-emotional skills. This lecture will report on a follow-up study assessing the effects of lipid-based nutrient supplements on cognitive, motor, and social-emotional development at age 4–6 y in the local Ghanaian setting.

About: Dr. Eugenia Maku Demuyakor was born and raised in Accra, Ghana, where she had much of her education, attending the University of Ghana for both her Bachelors and Master’s degrees in Community Nutrition and Food Science. Maku started her career as a young scientist in Ghana, where she spent close to a decade working on two multi-disciplinary intervention projects focused on developing cost-effective, early, sustainable, and culturally appropriate integrated nutrition interventions for improving the nutritional status of mothers and to enable young children reach their developmental potential. Thereafter, she pursued doctoral studies in International and Community Nutrition (with a minor emphasis in Child Development) at the University of California, Davis, US. Taking this cross-disciplinary approach, her research aimed at demonstrating the potential for nutrient supplementation very early in life to improve developmental outcomes in the long-term, particularly in low-middle-income country (LMIC) settings. Since finishing her PhD in 2018, Maku has been working as a Nutrition Scientist for the International Micronutrient Malnutrition Prevention and Control (IMMPaCt) Team in the Nutrition Branch at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There, she supports collaborative efforts with governments and global partners towards the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of nutrition intervention projects in LMICs. 

Location: The Core - Room Together - UZ Campus Ghent, entrance 37.