Dr Ntsoaki Lucia Meko is a registered dietitian and currently works as Academic Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Free State.  

Dr Meko’s research interests are community-based nutrition interventions, health education and communication, and food environments.  Her recent work includes developing a multilingual nutrition education toolkit. She has also worked on the creation of Sesotho Terminology for the field of Nutrition and Dietetics, in collaboration with colleagues from African Languages and the Centre for Gender and African Studies, at the University of the Free State. She has presented papers and workshops at the University of the Free State and National and International conferences.  She serves as a board member for the Nestlé Nutrition Institute in Africa.

Dr Meko’s professional responsibilities include undergraduate teaching, postgraduate supervision, and serving as an external examiner for both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. She also reviews for several peer-reviewed journals. Her scholarly engagement has led to invitations to participate in media panels and industry discussions. Currently, she serves as the resident dietitian for a local community radio station.

Dr Meko is passionate about promoting nutrition and sharing evidence-based information to improve the well-being of all members of society, regardless of their socio-economic status. She has actively contributed to several community initiatives, collaborating with non-profit organizations and engaging directly with communities at large.

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“Empowering future dietitians to lead in nutrition, management, and innovation.”

Angelique Carson-Porter is a Lecturer in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of the Free State, a position she has held since January 2018. She holds a Master’s degree in Dietetics from the University of the Free State and is currently pursuing her PhD in the same field.

Her professional experience includes serving as a Regional Dietitian for an international company, where she managed large-scale contracts across government and private healthcare facilities, as well as major specialised catering events. She also worked as a Community Dietitian in Thaba Nchu, gaining valuable experience in community-based nutrition and public health.

These diverse roles have shaped her commitment to developing dietitians who are not only clinically competent but also equipped with leadership, management, and entrepreneurial skills. She currently teaches Food Service Management and Community Nutrition, with an emphasis on service learning and community engagement projects, to third- and fourth-year Dietetics students, highlighting the strategic and managerial contributions of dietitians within both healthcare and the broader food service industry.

Her research interests focus on community nutrition, particularly among children attending Early Childhood Development centres and schools, and adolescents living with Type 1 Diabetes and their primary caregivers. As part of her community engagement, she hosts an annual wellness day for children living with Type 1 Diabetes and their family members, in collaboration with the Departments of Paediatrics and Child Health and Exercise and Sport Sciences.

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Marizeth Jordaan is a senior lecturer in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of the Free State. She holds a PhD in Dietetics from the same institution, with research focused on developing a nutrition screening tool to predict birth outcomes for pregnant women attending a high-risk antenatal clinic. Her academic journey includes a Master of Science in Dietetics, investigating health and nutritional risk factors for anaemia in rural women, and a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics.

Marizeth has served as a lecturer at the University of the Free State since 2012, where she combines her expertise in nutrition with a passion for education. She has contributed to undergraduate and postgraduate education in areas such as sports nutrition, therapeutic nutrition, and nutrition during the life cycle. Her research interests include maternal and child nutrition, dietary assessment, and the role of nutrition in public health.

She has supervised multiple MSc and PhD candidates and has examined numerous dissertations. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, with research focusing on issues such as anaemia prevalence, dietary diversity, obesity-related health risks, and maternal and child nutrition. Her work has appeared in journals like the South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition, BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, and Child: Care, Health and Development, contributing valuable insights to the field of dietetics. Additionally, she has presented her research at national and international conferences, including the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) Congress and the International Congress of Dietetics.

Dr Liska Robb is a registered dietitian and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of the Free State, where she has served since 2011. She completed her PhD in Dietetics with a focus on maternal nutrition, specifically examining the role of choline and overall diet quality during pregnancy, reflecting her commitment to improving health outcomes during the critical early stages of life.

She is the module leader for Micronutrients, Macronutrients, and Service Learning, and is actively involved in supervising research at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Dr Robb is passionate about mentoring emerging researchers and provides structured, supportive supervision that promotes critical thinking, methodological rigour, and academic independence.

Her research interests centre on maternal and infant nutrition, with emphasis on micronutrient intake during pregnancy, dietary intake and diet quality assessment methodology, micronutrient adequacy, and food security. She has published in international peer-reviewed journals and regularly presents her research at national and international scientific congresses.

Dr Robb recently led the development and validation of the South African Diet Quality Index for Pregnancy (SA-DQI-P), a context-specific tool designed to assess dietary quality among pregnant women in South Africa.

She welcomes motivated postgraduate students who are eager to contribute to evidence-based nutrition research and to translate scientific findings into meaningful clinical and community impact.

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Nutrition plays a pivotal role in disease management, particularly in chronic conditions such as chronic kidney disease (CKD) and in acute care settings like surgery and intensive care units (ICU), where targeted nutrition interventions are essential. Medical nutrition therapy (MNT) is crucial for improving patient outcomes, managing and preventing malnutrition, reducing complications, and enhancing quality of life.

My research focuses on understanding the role of dietetics in managing CKD and dialysis patients, as well as the impact of nutrition on surgical recovery and ICU care. Dietitians play a fundamental role in addressing critical challenges in ICU patients, including hypermetabolism, protein breakdown, muscle wasting, gastrointestinal dysfunction, and inflammation. These complex issues require specialized nutrition strategies to optimize patient recovery and outcomes. To support this, my PhD research is amongst a few in South Africa (SA), incorporating indirect calorimetry, the gold standard for accurately determining energy needs in ICU patients. Additionally, I aim to emphasise the importance of nutrition education and the effective communication of research findings within the scientific and healthcare community and the public.

High-quality research is essential for advancing evidence-based practice, particularly within the unique healthcare landscape of SA. By bridging gaps in clinical nutrition knowledge and implementation, my work aims to contribute to more effective and tailored nutrition interventions in both chronic and acute care settings.

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Prof Corinna Walsh’s research focuses on food and nutrition security across the life course, with a particular emphasis on maternal nutrition, micronutrient adequacy, and early-life health outcomes in South Africa. Her work is grounded in public health nutrition and aims to generate locally relevant evidence that informs practice, strengthens health systems, and contributes to breaking intergenerational cycles of malnutrition.

Her early research centred on nutrition epidemiology in resource-limited communities in the Free State and Lesotho, examining the interrelationships between HIV, cardiometabolic risk, micronutrient deficiencies, and household food insecurity. This work laid the foundation for subsequent intervention studies and established her interest in the structural and dietary determinants of poor nutritional outcomes.

Over the past decade, her research has increasingly focused on maternal and child nutrition, particularly during the first 1 000 days of life. As principal investigator of the Nutritional status of Expectant Mothers and their Infants (NuEMI) study, she leads a programme investigating maternal diet quality, micronutrient status, household food insecurity, and their associations with pregnancy and birth outcomes. This research has generated important evidence on nutrients such as iron, iodine, vitamin A and choline, as well as dietary patterns among South African women.

A defining feature of her career is a strong commitment to postgraduate training and research capacity development. Professor Walsh has supervised 44 MSc and 17 PhD students to completion and continues to mentor emerging researchers. Her work is characterised by sustained scholarly output, international collaboration, and a focus on advancing public health nutrition research that is both scientifically rigorous and socially relevant.

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My research journey started with my master’s study that I did in sports nutrition on “The effect of acceptability and influence of volume intake on dehydration and performance of marathon athletes).” With the opportunity to work with athletes from the South African Sports Commission and the training provided by them, I entered the world of sports nutrition. With my mentor, Prof Dannhauser I supervised post-graduate studies on “Nutrient intake of Blue Bull rugby players”, “Body composition, dietary intake and supplement use by swimmers at the high-performance centre, Pretoria” and “Caffeine and dietary intake of student athletes at the University of the Free State”.

My experience with sports nutrition expanded when I developed the module in sports nutrition, as the UFS was one of the first universities in South Africa to offer such a module.

The role that I played as supervisor in research on sports nutrition in the last couple of years concentrated on short-term macronutrient manipulation on endurance capacity of long-distance runners, the impact of a nutrition intervention on the nutritional status of amateur bodybuilding athletes in the Capricorn district, Limpopo province, South Africa and macronutrient requirements and intake in professional rugby players at Zebre rugby club, Italy. Since 2023, two articles on the body building athletes had been published in international journals. The third article of this research had been submitted to be published soon. The research done on the rugby players from the Zebre rugby club featured in an esteemed international journal on Sports Nutrition.

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