Dr Mark Hopkins

Responsibilities

• School Ethics Lead (AREA)

Research interests

Dr Mark Hopkins is an Associate Professor in Nutritional Physiology and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow within the School of Food Science & Nutrition, University of Leeds. He has over 15 years of experience conducting human appetite and energy balance research. His work aims to link whole-body metabolism and psychological function with human behaviour to gain a better understanding of how eating behaviour is shaped by our physiology, and how these relationships are altered under differing conditions of energy balance. In particular, he is interested in 1) the relationships between body composition, energy expenditure and appetite, 2) the role of fat-free mass and resting metabolic rate on the control of appetite, 3) the impact of exercise on appetite control, and 4) the biological and behavioural compensatory mechanisms that resist diet and exercise-induced weight loss.

Mark has published extensively in the areas of human appetite, energy balance and obesity, with >80 peer-reviewed research articles, a Scopus H-index of 31 (Google Scholar = 37), and >3000 Scopus citations (Google Scholar >5400). He has successfully obtained >£2.3 million in research funding as principle investigator, including a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. In addition to regularly speaking at leading national and international conferences, he is an invited member of the American National Institute of Health’s Expert Working Group on Obesity (Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict Obesity Treatment), and has authored two expert position statements on exercise and appetite control for the British Association of Sport & Exercise Sciences (the professional body for sport and exercise sciences in the UK). He is the network lead for the Association for the Study of Obesity Yorkshire Region, and a steering committee member for the BBSRC ORIC Research Hub, INFORM, and the Movement and Physical Activity Interdisciplinary Research Network at the University of Leeds.

• Examining the biological mechanisms that underlie the drive to eat in humans

Qualifications

• PhD- University of Leeds
• PGCLTHE- University of Leeds
• MSc- Leeds Beckett University
• BSc- Leeds Beckett University

Professional memberships

• The Association for the Study of Obesity
• The British Association of Sport & Exercise Science
• The Nutrition Society

Student education

Mark is the module leader for FOOD2260 Integration Between Physiology & Nutrition, and also lectures on FOOD2700 Energy Metabolism & Cardiometabolic Diseases. He also acts a dissertation supervisor at undergrade and post-graduate level.

Research groups and institutes

• Nutritional Epidemiology
• Obesity, Cancer and Metabolic Disease
• Human Nutrition and Lifestyle Intervention

Current postgraduate researchers

• Kai Yang