CHILD researcher Dr. Kozeta Miliku has been profiled by The Globe and Mail as one of five outstanding Canadian early-career researchers who are “making mighty advances in health, science and medicine.”
The article traces the trajectory of Dr. Miliku’s interest in preventing disease by understanding how early exposures can influence lifelong health—from her medical degree in Albania, her work with a birth cohort in the Netherlands, and her being recruited by CHILD’s former Deputy Director Dr. Meghan Azad into her CHILD-powered research on breastmilk, to her appointment as CHILD’s Clinical Science Officer.
The Globe article also mentions two of Dr. Miliku’s recent publications, based on CHILD data, about the health effects of children’s consumption of ultra-processed foods and about the influence of a father’s body weight on his children’s risk of obesity.
Overall, CHILD features prominently in the profile, thanks to Dr. Miliku’s appreciation of it as a “world-renowned research initiative… an amazing study, one of the best and the largest cohorts we have in Canada.”
“It is a wonderful reflection of Kozeta’s commitment and talent that our national newspaper chose her out of thousands of her peers for this special treatment,” comments CHILD Director Dr. Padmaja Subbarao.
“The fact she was chosen also speaks to the opportunities CHILD affords for researchers to conduct impactful, innovative research. Fortunately, the tremendous potential of CHILD’s data draws into the study’s ranks people of tremendous potential like Kozeta.
“We’re very proud of her, and lucky to have her not only as CHILD’s Clinical Science Officer but as the head of CHILD’s cardio-metabolic research program.”
The two-page spread, entitled “Meet Canada’s next generation of researchers,” appeared in the Folio section of the Globe on 30 June 2025. With weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, the Globe is one of the country’s most read newspapers and is widely regarded as Canada’s “newspaper of record.”
Within the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto, Dr. Miliku’s lab, the Miliku Lab, explores how early-life nutritional exposures, particularly ultra-processed food consumption from preconception to childhood, 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.
