Understanding micronutrient bioavailability and the impact on micronutrient malnutrition

Jayashree Arcot received her Bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from theUniversity ofMadras, India and aMaster’s degree in Food Science and Nutrition. She received her PhD in Foods and Nutrition from the Andhra Pradesh Agricultural University in Hyderabad, India in 1988while being a recipient of the prestigious Senior Research Fellowship from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. While in Hyderabad she had the opportunity to collaboratewith several leading scientists in the field of nutrition at theNational InstituteofNutrition, a premier organization under the auspices of the Indian Council of Medical Research in India and the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT). She mastered the analysis of vitamins in foods using themicrobiological assay during her PhD. When she arrived in Australia in the early 1990s, as an academic at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, she had the opportunity to establish a research group in the field of food science and nutrition. She pursued several projects funded by government and industry with her food-based approaches to solve nutrition problems particularly micronutrient malnutrition. Fascinated by the complexity of vitamins in foods and their matrix effects, she established a laboratory for vitamin methodology for foods using the microbiological assay, high-end chromatography (LC-MS/MS), to measure different forms of vitamins,