Current ENC members

Associate Professor Karam Kostner

Cardiologist and Lipidologist
University of Queensland, Brisbane

Dr Karam Kostner is a clinical lipidologist and cardiologist at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Australia. He is Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Queensland and is also Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Dr Kostner has published numerous clinical papers, review articles and book chapters. He serves in editorial review capacity for several distinguished scientific and medical journals and acts as an advisory board member for several multinational companies.

Dr Manny Noakes

Senior Research Dietitian
CSIRO Health Sciences and Nutrition, Adelaide

Dr Manny Noakes is a senior research dietitian at the clinical research unit of the CSIRO Division of Human Nutrition based in South Australia.

Dr Noakes worked as a clinical dietitian at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Flinders Medical Centre before joining the CSIRO in 1991. Currently a key member of CSIRO’s research unit looking at diet, nutrition and health, she is the leader of the research team that developed the Total Wellbeing Diet, which was turned into a best-selling book published by Penguin.

She is also Chair of National Heart Foundation of Australia Nutrition and Metabolism Advisory Committee and has authored over 80 scientific papers.

Dr Tania Markovic

Endocrinologist, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
Clinical Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney

Dr Tania Markovic is an endocrinologist at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Sydney. She is a member of the Metabolism and Obesity Research Group, which runs clinical trials at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and has an attachment with the Metabolism and Obesity Services and the Diabetes in Pregnancy Clinic. She also runs a specialised obesity clinic in central Sydney and has a general endocrinology practice.

Dr Markovic has a particular interest in nutrition and obesity. Her research has focused on ways in which dietary interventions improve carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in type 2 diabetes. She is currently examining effects of dietary interventions on pregnancy outcomes in gestational diabetes mellitus.

Dr Don McNamara

Former executive director of the Egg Nutrition Center in Washington DC, US.

Dr McNamara PhD, was the Executive Director of the Egg Nutrition Center in Washington, DC. Dr McNamara received his PhD in biochemistry in 1972 from Purdue University in Indiana and was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Cancer Institute in the Department of Physiological Chemistry at the Ohio State University Medical College from 1972-74.

In 1974 he joined the Lipid Metabolism Laboratory at the Rockefeller University in New York as an Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1980.

In 1985 Dr McNamara was appointed Professor of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson until 1995 when he accepted the position with the Egg Nutrition Center. He has published over 150 research articles, reviews and book chapters on the relationships between dietary lipids, plasma lipoprotein and cardiovascular disease risk.

He is on the editorial boards of a number of scientific journals, the advisory boards of the American Council on Science and Health and the French Centre de Recherche et D'Information Nutritionnelles (CERIN), and a member of the Council on Arteriosclerosis of the American Heart Association, the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, the American Society for Nutritional Sciences, and the Society for Nutrition Education.

Ms Sharon Natoli

Accredited Practising Dietitian Founding Director,
Food and Nutrition Australia, Sydney

Sharon Natoli is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and Founding Director of Food & Nutrition Australia (FNA). FNA is one of Australia’s most professional and progressive nutrition clinics and consultancies, providing an independent and credentialed source of food and nutrition advice to consumers and corporate and business organisations.

Ms Natoli has more than 16 years experience as a practising dietitian and is frequently called upon to present at conferences, meetings and seminars. As an experienced media commentator, Sharon regularly appears on national television and in leading magazines and newspapers.

In the past she has provided a monthly nutrition column for the general practitioner weekly publication Medical Observer and has also co-written three nutrition books on healthy eating, weight loss and food facts..

Dr Cameron Grant

Associate Professor University of Auckland and Consultant at Starship Children’s Hospital

Dr Cameron Grant is an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland and a consultant paediatrician at the Starship Children’s Hospital. He graduated MBChB from the University of Otago and PhD from the University of Auckland. Following paediatric training in Auckland Dr Grant completed his postgraduate paediatric training in the United States, firstly as a paediatric resident at Duke University Medical Center, and then as a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital. He holds qualifications as a paediatrician in Australasia (Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Paediatrics) and the US (Diplomat of the American Board of Paediatrics).

Dr Grant returned to the Johns Hopkins University in 2008 as a Fulbright Senior Scholar. In 2008 he was also awarded an overseas fellowship with the National Institute of Health Research National School of Primary Care (UK). This fellowship is based in the Department of Primary Health Care at the University of Oxford.

In addition to his clinical practice and research commitments Dr Grant’s teaching skills have been recognised with both faculty and university wide teaching awards including a University of Auckland Teaching Excellence Award for sustained excellence in teaching.

Dr Grant’s research focuses on the prevention of disease and improvement in health by immunisation or by improved nutrition.  His is the Associate Director of Growing Up in New Zealand, New Zealand’s new longitudinal study. In addition to this he is a lead investigator on a randomised placebo control study of vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy and infancy and an investigator on a randomised trial of a primary care based intervention which aims to improve the timeliness of immunisation delivery. He has published more than 80 refereed research papers, reviews and book chapters.