Dr Gina Trapp is an ARC DECRA Fellow at The University of Western Australia (UWA) and Head of Food and Nutrition at the Telethon Kids Institute (18 staff/students), UWA. She has a Bachelor of Health Science (Nutrition and Psychology) with First Class Honours and a PhD in Public Health from UWA. She is also a Registered Public Health Nutritionist recognised by the Nutrition Society of Australia and a former NHMRC Early Career Research Fellow.

At only 6.85 years post-PhD, Gina has 117 publications (over half of which are published in the top 10% of journals in their field), has delivered 136 conference/seminar presentations (43 as invited/keynote speaker) and has secured research funds totalling in excess of $9.46M (over $3.78M as CIA; 12 Category-1 grants as CIA).

The quality and impact of her research has been formally recognised through a total of 37 awards/prizes at the local, national and international level, including, a West Australian Young Tall Poppy Science Award, recognising her as one of WA’s most outstanding young scientists.

Bridging the disciplines of nutrition, public health, geography and urban planning, Gina’s program of research is helping to understand how the environments within which children live, play and attend school influence the types of foods they eat, their physical activity levels and their weight status; providing the key evidence necessary to underpin public health and urban planning policy and practice changes to create healthy food environments.

She currently leads eight ARC, Cancer Council WA, Healthway, National Heart Foundation, WA Department of Transport and WA Health Department-funded research projects focussing on improving school, community, consumer and cultural food environments to support access to healthy foods in collaboration with key stakeholders and the community.