Dr Yun Yun Gong

Dr Yun Yun Gong has joined the School as Associate Professor in International Food Safety and Security.

Dr Yun Yun Gong Associate Professor in International Food Safety and Security is from a public health background by training. Yun Yun obtained a PhD degree in Food Toxicology in 1999 and then started her research fellowship at the University of Leeds in 2000. She became a Scientific Visitor at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2013. After thirteen successful years in the School of Medicine, she moved to become a Reader in the Institute for Global Food Security, Queen's University of Belfast. Yun Yun returned to Leeds to join the School in July 2016 as an Associate Professor in International Food Safety and Security.

She has a strong interest in research on dietary exposure to harmful chemicals (especially mycotoxins) and human health outcomes e.g. child stunting, cancer and reproductive health, and the prevention of mycotoxins exposure in the Africa communities, working together with multi-disciplinary expertise from agriculture, plant science and policy makers. Her other research interests include understanding the relationship between diet and cancer, and conducting food safety risk assessment with a global perspective. She applies both epidemiological and laboratory biomarker techniques in her research.

Dr Gong has led several large international collaborative research projects and has generated many high impact publications in the field. She was a working group member evaluating aflatoxin and human health for the WHO/IARC in 2014, and is currently a working group member for the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on fusarium mycotoxin risk assessment. She has served as a lead of a global expert team to prepare a series of scientific reports on aflatoxin and human health to guide government policy making for the East Africa Community (EAC).

Dr Gong currently holds an Honorary Team Leader position in the China National Center for Food Safety and Risk Assessment.