Dr. Anzman-Frasca Stephanie

Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Anzman-Frasca is an expert on childhood obesity with training in child development. In her current research Dr. Anzman-Frasca focuses on making healthy choices easier for children using both laboratory- and community-based approaches. She is specifically interested in increasing the availability and selection of healthier children’s meal options in restaurants, promoting early childhood self-regulation abilities, and examining individual differences in susceptibility to obesity interventions to ensure that childhood obesity prevention efforts address, rather than exacerbate, health disparities. Finally, Dr. Anzman-Frasca is interested in ways in which childhood obesity prevention efforts may benefit other aspects of health and well-being, such as cognitive functioning and socio-emotional development, and has been pursuing this idea in recent studies focused on school breakfast, physical activity, and self-regulation. Dr. Anzman-Frasca will discuss the results of the REWARD project’s efforts targeting young children, in which the impact of individual differences in reward sensitivity and specific learning paradigms on tasting and consuming behavior were studied.

Prof. Dr. Blechert Jens

Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Salzburg

Prof. Dr. Blechert is director of ‘The eating behavior laboratory’. Researchers are interested in a variety of aspects related to eating- and weight-regulation. For example, dispositional eating styles such as emotional eating and stress-related eating. Another key concept in their research is food craving. As chocolate is one of the most often craved foods in Western societies, our studies revolve around chocolate craving in particular. In addition to these basic eating-related behaviors and concepts, researchers of The eating behavior laboratory are also interested in clinically-relevant conditions such as eating disorders and obesity.

Prof. Dr. Finlayson Graham

University of Leeds

Graham Finlayson is Associate Professor in Biopsychology in the Faculty of Medicine & Health, University of Leeds, UK. His training includes positions at New York Obesity Centre at Columbia University and Nestlé Research Centre in Lausanne. His research expertise focus on understanding what underpins control of human appetite and why people overeat. His recent research involves examining psychological and behavioural parameters of food reward (liking and wanting) in relation to physiological and metabolic parameters during energy deficit. He has published around 90 peer-reviewed research papers with +1,700 total citations.

Prof. Dr. Kremers Stef

Department of Health Promotion, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University

Prof. Dr. Kremers is professor Prevention of Obesity at Maastricht University. The target of his research is on overweight and obesity prevention. He focuses on determinants of dietary behavior and physical activity and on the evaluation of comprehensive interventions regarding these behaviors for different target groups (e.g., children, adolescents, young adults, (pre-) diabetics). Moreover, he also investigated methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of determinants of energy balance-related behaviors as well as to the evaluation of preventive interventions. Prof. Kremers will discuss the results of the work package targeting adolescents, in which an mHealth intervention was developed to change adolescents’ snacking behaviors, and place them in a broader perspective applying the Environmental research framework for weight gain prevention.