The University of Toronto will receive C$500,000 over five years to support research led by Kozeta Miliku, a physician trained in Albania who studies how nutrition shapes children’s health. Miliku was named a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Child and Youth Health, the university announced on November 12.
Miliku is an assistant professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the university’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research will fund the chair at C$100,000 a year. The award was among 31 new or renewed Canada Research Chairs that the university announced.
How Diet Before Birth and During Adolescence Shapes Health
Miliku’s lab studies how nutrition at different stages of life relates to growth and the risk of chronic disease. One area of research looks at parents’ diets before conception, with particular attention to what fathers eat. Another examines nutrition during puberty and adolescence, when rapid growth makes diet an important part of development.
She also serves as clinical science officer for the CHILD Cohort Study and leads its cardiometabolic research program. The Canadian study follows children over time, allowing researchers to examine how early experiences relate to later health. Miliku has used its data to investigate links between diet, growth and obesity, as well as conditions such as asthma and allergies.
Her recent work has examined how consumption of ultra-processed foods relates to children’s physical and mental health. In a separate study, she and her colleagues found that children who drank whole milk in early childhood had lower odds of obesity later in childhood than those who drank reduced-fat milk. The finding describes an association observed in the study.
From Medical School in Tirana to a Research Lab in Toronto
Miliku earned her medical degree at the University of Medicine of Tirana in 2013. She went on to complete a doctorate in clinical epidemiology at Erasmus University in Rotterdam in 2017. Her doctoral work examined how genetics, maternal health and nutrition relate to fetal growth and childhood kidney function.
She moved to Canada for postdoctoral training, first at the University of Manitoba and then at McMaster University. There, she studied how nutrition and genetics early in life might influence the development of chronic conditions in Canadian children.
The federal Canada Research Chairs program was established in 2000 to support research and training at Canadian universities. Tier 2 chairs are intended for emerging researchers and can be renewed once. For Miliku, the five-year appointment will support work that follows nutrition across stages of development, from the period before conception through adolescence.
