DrNavoda Liyana Pathirana

Our food systems – the way we grow, produce, transport, sell and consume food – and how we govern our food system influence our health and well-being and the health of our planet. I bring together food policy, public health and environmental science researchers, policymakers, and advocates to find out how we can govern our food systems to grow, produce, transport, sell and consume foods to safeguard our and the planet's health for generations to come. I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University's Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition (GLOBE) at the Institute for Health Transformations. In my fellowship, I will launch project ECHO (Evaluating the Co-benefits of food policies on Health, environmental and socio-economic Outcomes) to create the first-ever quantitative framework to estimate co-benefits of food policies based on environmental-economic modelling techniques.

I completed my Ph.D. in food system sustainability at the University of Sydney (Australia) in 2023. My Ph.D. introduced a novel nutrition level sustainability assessment technique by integrating nutritional ecological technique, nutritional geometry, and ecological economic technique, environmental extended input-output analysis. I applied this technique to assess the sustainability of dietary patterns, dietary recommendations, and ultra-processed food consumption in Australia in relation to macronutrients. Me and my Ph.D. supervisory team won the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research (2022) for our work integrating nutrition and ecological economics fields and my Ph.D. research received the Postgraduate Research Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement from the Faculty of Science, the University of Sydney (2022). I bring my knowledge and expertise in interdisciplinary quantitative research to the work I do in my current roles at Deakin University, where I apply diverse analysis techniques to generate quantitative evidence in harmful digital marketing regulations and quantification of environmental impacts of supermarket foods with the use of AI and programming languages like R and MATLAB. 

I have utilised my quantitative analysis skills in many fields, including unhealthy digital marketing monitoring and regulation, food systems sustainability, food and public health policy, health promotions, health and nutrition, digital health, and public health nutrition. My research interests are broadly commercial determinants of health, harmful digital marketing, public health policy, public health nutrition, food system sustainability assessment and modelling, and most importantly, integration of non-traditional research disciplines to investigate complex problems at the intersection of these fields using quantitative research methods and novel analysis tools. Previously, I completed my BSc. (Food Science and Technology) with a First Class Honours as the Batch top at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Sri Lanka (2019). I also worked as a Tutor for Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs in Food Science, health and nutrition, and sustainability at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka and the University of Sydney, Australia.