Chiara Murgia hold a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology obtained in Italy and moved to Australia early in 2014 to take up a lecturer position at Swinburne University where she coordinated the nutrition program. Chiara joined the Be Active Sleep Eat (BASE) Facility of the Nutrition and Dietetics Department at Monash University in July 2015 where she is pursuing her interest in micronutrients metabolism, nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics.

In the late 90s Chiara spent 3 years as postdoc at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC, USA where she gained experience in mouse genetics and epithelial cell biology. In 1998 she joined the research staff of the Italian National Institute for Food and Nutrition (INRAN now called CREA) in Rome, where for more than 15 years she participated and was responsible for several projects that looked at molecular mechanisms of micronutrients' activity; in particular she investigated the role of zinc and zinc transporters action in the context of health and disease using animal and tissue-culture models.

The completions of the Human Genomic Projects in 2001 and the techniques and knowledge emerging from genome projects that followed made possible to investigate the role of genetic makeup in individual response to diet and life style. In collaboration with her colleagues at BASE Chiara is using cutting edge molecular techniques such deep sequencing and RNAseq to investigate the impact of nutrition and life style in the developing of chronic diseases. "We now have the technologies and the tools to answer why individuals respond differently to diet and life style and whether is possible to personalise our interventions" she says. "The road ahead is still long but it is exciting to be here at this time".