Post-Doctoral Fellow
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences UCLA School of Medicine Los
Hila Zelicha, RD, Ph.D., is currently a Post-Doctoral fellow at the General Surgery Department at UCLA, USA, where her research focuses on the effects of bariatric surgery on severely obese populations. Hila received her Ph.D. from Ben Gurion University, Israel, in the field of nutrition and abdominal obesity. As part of her MSc and Ph.D. studies, she took an active part in two long-term, large-scale, comprehensive dietary randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (CENTRAL (1,2), DIRECT PLUS (3,4)), as well as a sub-study of a continuous glucose monitoring crossover trial (5). Hila has over 35 peer-reviewed high-ranked publications.
1. Gepner Y, Shelef I, Schwarzfuchs D.. Shai I. Effect of Distinct Lifestyle Interventions on Mobilization of Fat Storage Pools: CENTRAL Magnetic Resonance Imaging Randomized Controlled Trial. Circ 2018;137(11)1143-1157.
2. Zelicha H, Schwarzfuchs D, Shelef I.. Shai I. Changes of renal sinus fat and renal parenchymal fat during an 18-month randomized weight loss trial. Clin Nutr. 2018;37(4):1145–53.
3. Zelicha H, Kloting N, Kaplan A..Shai I. The effect of high-polyphenol Mediterranean diet on visceral adiposity; The DIRECT PLUS randomized controlled trial. 2022, BMC Medicine.
4. Yaskolka Meir A, Rinott E, Tsaban G.. Shai I. Effect of green-Mediterranean diet on intrahepatic fat: the DIRECT PLUS randomised controlled trial. Gut. 2021. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2020-323106.
5. Zelicha H, Kaplan A, Meir AY.. Shai I. The effect of wolffia globosa mankai, a green aquatic plant, on postprandial glycemic response: A randomized crossover controlled trial. Diabetes Care. 2019;42(7):1162–9.