Professor Alan Donnelly is a Professor of Exercise Physiology in the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences at the University of Limerick (UL).He established the Physical Activity for Health research cluster in UL’s Health Research Institute (HRI; www.ul.ie/hri), and is now the HRI’s Interim Director. Prof. Donnelly’s research spans the HRI’s themes of lifestyle and health technology. He has highly developed expertise on the validation and application of accelerometer devices that measure physical behaviours across the lifespan. He is particularly interested in accurate measurement of all physical behaviours across the 24-hour cycle, and how these behaviours influence health. He has published validations of the wearable devices, and relies on data processing tools developed by his group to interrogate accelerometer device data. He has designed and implemented successful cross-sectional and intervention studies using device-based measurement in both adolescent and older adult populations.

The WEALTH team at UL are based in the Physical Education and Sport Sciences (PESS) Department, which is a vibrant and rapidly growing department in the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences and also forms part of the ‘Physical Activity for Health’ PAfH multidisciplinary research cluster. A key strength of the UL team is our collaborations with international experts in the area, and with stakeholders in community, policy and healthcare organisations. We have a track record of successful collaborations amongst our members that have led to co-supervised PhD graduations, funded projects and impact on health and social care. The group has four complementary and inter-linking focus areas;

1. Measurement, surveillance and Determinants of PA
2. Biomedicine of PA
3. PA and Exercise as Medicine
4. Policy Impact and Implementation of effective interventions

Our research is cross-sectoral in public health, community, healthcare, sports and school settings, and across the lifespan, from children to older people.

Dr. Janas Harrington has a PhD in Nutrition Epidemiology, is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition and leads the Food Policy Research Team in the Centre for Health and Diet Research, School of Public Health, UCC. Dr. Harrington is a research-active public health nutritionist with an interest in studying the determinants of healthy dietary patterns and the association between diet patterns and chronic disease, including cardiovascular risk and obesity. Dr. Harrington has led some of the largest nutrition epidemiological studies in Ireland. She has expertise in assessment of dietary intake, dietary pattern analysis and food policy research.

Professor Jean-Michel Oppert, MD, PhD, is professor of nutrition at Sorbonne University, Paris, France and researcher within the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Unit (EREN/UP13). He has a long-standing interest in the health impact of lifestyle and related public health issues with a European perspective. His research has focused on the measurement of physical activity and sedentary behaviour in population-based as well as in clinical studies, the delineation of relationships between habitual physical activity, sedentary behaviour and dietary habits at population level, and the investigation of urban environmental determinants of physical activity and diet.

Dr. Tomas Vetrovsky has a background in medicine and physical activity research. He is specifically interested in the objective measurement of physical activity using a combination of accelerometry and ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Currently, Dr. Vetrovskyis leading two large randomised controlled trials of mHealth and just-in-time adaptive interventions in clinical populations (heart failure and diabetes). He is also interested in exercise training in older adults and interactions between structured training and habitual physical activity. Dr. Vetrovsky has contributed to the development of the HealthReact system at the University of Hradec Kralove, and he is participating in several studies using the system for EMA and JITAIs.

Dr Antje Hebestreit is an experienced nutrition scientist and epidemiologist. Her research focuses on the role of dietary intake, dietary and physical behaviours in association with non-communicable diseases, including obesity. She has an extensive experience in the development, application and evaluation of instruments for assessing dietary intake and behaviour, physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep as well asnthe design and implementation of small and large-scale epidemiological studies for investigating lifestyle-related diseases and their determinants. ORCID: 0000-0001-7354-595

Professor Greet Cardon, head of the Department of Movement and Sports Sciences leads the research group “Physical Activity and Health” in Ghent University. The research group is one of the leading units worldwide in the field of physical activity, sedentary behaviourand health promotion and has been involved in various EU and NIH funded projects. Her research mainly focuses on the measurement of physical activity and sedentary behaviour, as well as identifying the most effective ways to promote more physical activity and less sitting in different age groups across the life span. She also has large expertise in implementation, cocreation and Citizen Science.