My research activities are focused around the in utero origins of adult metabolic disease. Through the use of cell based and animal/human model systems, and technologies such as PET/CT and MRI, we investigate, how stressors such as hypoxia, oxidative stress and infection and poor maternal diet during fetal life, impact placental, and fetal blood vessel, liver, adipose, kidney, heart and muscle development and function. These studies aim to address what reprogramming events these stressors initiate in the womb and what are the implications of these outcomes for the onset and severity of childhood and adult diseases, such as insulin resistance and associated non-communicable diseases including obesity, cardiovascular disease and hypertension. More importantly the research sets out to understand the degree of plasticity of these changes by investigating, if they are locked after being reprogrammed, or are there windows of opportunity for us to intervene and rescue some of these unfavorable in utero-induced changes.