Professor Felice Jacka didn’t study maths or biology at school, yet in 2021 she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her services to Nutritional Psychiatry.

Felice is the founder and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research, and widely recognised as an international leader in the field. Felice’s research focuses on the how diet and nutrition impact our mental health.

As a researcher, Felice became keenly interested in why there was a lack of data on whether diet and nutrition had any significance on prevention or treatment of mental disorders. Felice set out to change this, and in the process, became a pioneer in the field of Nutritional Psychiatry.

In 2012, Felice began the ground-breaking SMILEs (Supporting the Modification of Lifestyle In Lowered Emotional States) trial, which empirically tested whether diet and nutrition had a direct impact on depression. This was the first trial of its kind and provided the first high quality scientific data set to this area of study.

Recently, Felice has been spending her time researching with the Food and Mood Centre at Deakin University, where she is the co-director.