Dr. Genelle Lunken is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), a registered dietitian, and the translational research lead at the IBD Centre of BC. She completed her PhD in Nutritional Science at Massey University in New Zealand, where she studied how habitual dietary fibre intake shapes gut microbiota responses to a prebiotic intervention. She later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UBC under the mentorship of Drs. Bruce Vallance and Kevan Jacobson, investigating how fibre influences gut microbiota and inflammation using various mouse models of IBD.
Since establishing her lab in 2023, Dr. Lunken’s research has focused on host–immune–microbe interactions and identifying dietary and microbial factors that drive variable responses to nutritional and medical therapies in IBD. She leads several clinical studies in adult and pediatric IBD patients to advance this area of research.