Draft:Mio Ozawa

Mio Ozawa Cookson is a Japanese nutritonal scientist and epidemiologist, awarded a PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology from Kyushu University in 2013 and subsequently joining the institution as a postdoctoral fellow. Since becoming the first Japanese woman to receive the L’oreal-UNESCO International Fellowship for her work with dietary epidemiology in 2014, she has held academic and research positions at a number of institutions in Japan, the United Kingdom, and South Korea, with publications mostly focusing on the links between diet and various neurological diseases.

Education
Ozawa received a PhD in nutritional epidemiology from Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan in 2013 following publication of her work on the linkage of certain dietary habits, specifically high consumption of rice and lower consumption of soybeans and algae, in elderly Japanese populations and rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s development over a 15 year period.

Career
Following her position as a postdoctoral fellow at Kyushu University, she was awarded the L’oreal-UNESCO International Fellowship in 2014. She subsequently continued her work at the University College, London in the United Kingdom as a research associate. Subsequently, she transitioned her academic focus to pediatrics, taking a position within the UCL’s “CHAMPP,” Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Palliative Care and Paediatrics department as a research associate within the general and adolescent pediatrics unit until 2019. Her contributions to papers during this period included mostly research on the clinically observable effects and diagnosis practices regarding brain tumors. Following this position, she joined the Population Health Sciences department of Bristol Medical School in Bristol, UK as a research associate in 2018, working there until 2020.

Publications
Ozawa’s work has focused on clinical manifestations, prevention, and treatment strategies for various neurological diseases to include dementia, Alzheimer’s, brain tumors, and more. Her earliest published work was as an undergraduate in 2008, regarding contributory factors to high school tobacco consumption in Japan based on a study of over 2000 high school males in the Fukoka area, indicating an early career interest in public health based on behavioural determinants.

Her most cited, and perhaps most impactful publication on which she is the primary author, is the 2013 Hisayama study, the first study to assess the link between various Asian dietary profiles and rates of Alzheimer’s incidence, as the majority of literature on dietary Alzheimer’s prevention had focused on the Mediterranean diet. This study was a 15 year long longitudinal survey of over 1000 participants’ dietary habits, classification into types, and evaluation of comparative rates of Alzheimer’s development, illustrating a significant protective effect with high consumption of soybeans, algae, vegetables, and dairy alongside a low consumption of rice. This dataset was also used to contribute to various other authors’ works regarding insulin and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular disease at Kyushu University.