In school, Hilda had wanted a career helping people towards better health, without the pressures and drama of being a doctor. Her foodie mother had wanted to be a dietitian and while this never happened, the seed was planted. She got a place on the BSc Nutrition degree at Trinity College in Dublin, linked to the Diploma in Dietetics.

The whole course was four and a half years, and Professor Mike Gibney was a particularly inspiring lecturer.

Hilda tells me.

However, her placement at St James’s Hospital was rather stressful. “A shortage of placements meant some reordering of segments, resulting in perhaps critical evaluations,” she explains. Upon graduation she decided against a clinical career; a short project had opened the allure of research, and she successfully obtained a funded post at the University of Southampton. Her PhD project was a laboratory assessment of inflammatory markers linked to diets high in different fats: butter, corn, coconut or fish oil.