Japanese woman in SYRI team studying diet and lifestyle

A Japanese woman is not a common phenomenon among Czech researchers. SYRI National Institute has several foreign scientists on its team, and one of them is Maika Ohno. She is looking at how the recent pandemic has affected our diet and food choices in relation to geo-social characteristics. Aside from work, she also enjoys swimming and running, and has run a marathon and several half marathons.

Maika Ohno has already visited several countries with science. She completed her Master's degree in the UK. She looked at differences in diet quality of older people according to socio-economic factors using UK national diet and nutrition data, for which she won an award. "I looked at the epidemiology of nutrition and how the environment influences our food choices and disease. Where we live affects what we eat. The prevalence of obesity was closely related to certain areas in the UK and I wanted to look at the interactions between nutrition and socio-geographical differences, particularly in older people as our society is ageing rapidly," Ohno said.

Her topic includes mapping health inequalities and in this context she came across the publications of Prof Dagmar Dzur. She got in touch with her and that is how she got to the Czech Republic. "Within SYRI, my research topic is how the recent pandemic has affected our diet and food choices in relation to geo-social characteristics. My PhD project is called The Geography of Food and Health: social inequalities in access to healthy foods in an older population," Ohno said.

She works at Charles University in a team measured on the geography of health, which is an exception within universities. "My PhD here allowed me to understand spatial analysis and create a GIS map showing the relationship between the concentration of junk food restaurants and obesity prevalence in the UK. The location of the institute is also a special factor, as Prague is in the centre of Europe and it is easy to attend international conferences," said Ohno.

Her passion is sport, which she recommends to everyone as it contributes to a healthy lifestyle and is thus strongly linked to her work. "I run once a week or twice a week, and I swim twice a week. My specialty is actually swimming and triathlon. I swam as a kid and I love swimming in the ocean. I've only done a marathon once, but I've done many half marathons, including the Prague Half Marathon last year. My best time for a half marathon is 1:50 hours," said Ohno, for whom running and swimming are meditation. "When I run or swim, I am in zen mode, focusing on nature and my body. Running and swimming keep my body, mind and spirit in balance," the scientist added.