Rachelle Pretorius

Rachelle Pretorius is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia (UWA) Medical School and a member of the UWA Centre for Child Health Research, affiliated with Telethon Kids Institute. She holds a PhD in Nutrition from UWA, completed as part of the SYMBA Study examining maternal dietary fiber and allergic disease prevention. Her research focuses on prenatal nutrition's impact on immune, metabolic, and neurodevelopmental outcomes in infants and children.

Education: PhD in Nutrition, University of Western Australia (2022). Previous industry experience as a global regulatory manager in nutrition. Current roles include leading projects in the Nutrition In Early Life (NIEL) Team at Telethon Kids Institute, exploring maternal diet-brain development linkages and allergic disease prevention strategies.

Research interests center on early-life nutrition's lifelong health impacts, including dietary fiber, prebiotics, and micronutrient profiles. Key areas include: 1) Maternal diet and immune programming, 2) Neurodevelopmental effects of gestational diabetes, 3) Longitudinal birth cohort analyses of nutritional profiles. She collaborates with European Child Cohort Networks (ECCN) and has pioneered randomized controlled trials on prebiotic supplementation.

Publications highlight maternal bread/thiamine intake's role in allergies, gestational diabetes-neurodevelopment links, and high-fiber diets' metabolic benefits. Her work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals 2 (Zero Hunger) and 3 (Good Health).

Advising: No formal advisees listed. Grants: Experience in big-data management and international collaborations. Labs/Teams: NIEL Team at Telethon Kids Institute, SYMBA Study group.