CHILD researcher Dr. Kozeta Miliku has been awarded a prestigious Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Nutrition and Child and Youth Health.
CRCs are research professorships established by the Government of Canada in 2000 to attract and retain top scholars and scientists. Dr. Miliku’s is a Tier 2 Chair, recognizing her as an exceptional emerging researcher with the potential to lead in her field.
Dr. Miliku’s research—into child and parental nutrition and its effects on child and youth health, including growth trajectories, cardiometabolic health and obesity—has gained wide scientific and public attention. Her most recent work has been advancing insights into ultraprocessed foods in Canadian diets and how consuming high levels of these foods may impact both the physical and mental health of children. CHILD has been the primary data source for her findings to date, some of which have been profiled in the Key Discoveries section of the Study’s website.
As part of her CRC, Dr. Miliku’s host university, the University of Toronto, will receive $100,000 annually for 5 years to support her research efforts; the Chair is also potentially renewable for one time. The Chair is funded by the the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Canada’s federal funding agency for health research.
Dr. Miliku is CHILD’s Clinical Science Officer and the head of CHILD’s cardio-metabolic research program, in addition to being an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. Her lab, the Miliku Lab, explores how early-life nutritional exposures shape the risk of chronic diseases in children. Dr. Miliku is also the Co-Chair of the “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigeneity” Committee of the DOHaD Canada Society. She holds a PhD in Clinical Epidemiology from Erasmus University in the Netherlands and is also qualified as a medical doctor, having received an MD from the University of Medicine of Tirana in Albania.
In July 2025, Dr. Miliku was profiled by Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail as a rising star among Canada’s next generation of researchers.how