24 – 27

September 2024

Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Dr. David Mela

Consultant Nutrition Science and Research, The Netherlands

“Crop circles, zombies and zebras: Challenges and (self-)deception in food research”

David Mela is an independent nutrition scientist, advisor and consultant, serving in roles which can benefit from his combination of research expertise and commercial experience. David obtained a PhD in nutrition (Penn State, 1985) followed by an academic research career in the US (Monell Chemical Senses Center) and UK (Institute of Food Research), before joining Unilever from 1998 until retirement in 2019. His background provided experience with a wide diversity of topics in nutrition, reflected in over 100 professional publications, mainly in the areas of sensory perception and food choice, appetite and eating behaviour, and energy and macronutrient metabolism. As a team manager and senior scientist in Unilever, his work focused on innovation research in eating behaviour, weight control and metabolic health, also providing scientific guidance on related business, technical and regulatory issues. Throughout his career, David also provided expert input to a range of academic, public health and trade organizations, including membership of the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, and the editorial boards of Nutrients and International Journal of Obesity. David is a Registered Nutritionist and Fellow of the Association for Nutrition. Since retiring, he focuses more on cycling, gardening and beer-brewing, but is still also active in various research, advisory and consultancy roles.

https://djmela.eu/

Anthony Warner is an experienced professional development chef, who moved from a successful career in restaurants and outside catering to developing products as the Head Development Chef of the UK’s largest food manufacturer. He now consults for food manufacturers and retailers on matters of innovation, communication and health. Associate of the Fruition Food Accelerator, supporting nascent food businesses in the North of England. Author of The Angry Chef – Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating, published by One-world in July 2017. Winner of the Hearst Big Book Awards Health and Lifestyle Category in 2018, and double nominated by the Guild of Food Writers in the same year. Second book, ‘The Truth About Fat’ was published by One-world in January 2019, and was The Times Book of the Week on release. ‘Ending Hunger’, the third book in the Angry Chef Trilogy, was published by One-world in January 2021. Anthony’s career goal is to positively influence the food people eat and bring the joy of good cookery to as many people as possible.

https://www.the-angry-chef.com/about

Anthony Warner

Professional chef

“Ending Hunger; How we can feed the world without destroying it”

Plenary Speakers

  • Dr. Franco Biasoli

    Fondazione Edmund Mach, Italy

    Direct Injection Mass Spectrometry for In-Vivo Flavour Compound Monitoring from Microorganisms and Humans

    Franco Biasioli, physicist by training, earned his qualification as full professor in Analytical Chemistry in 2013. He currently leads the Sensory Quality Unit at the Research and Innovation Center of the Edmund Mach Foundation, where he has developed a high-throughput/high sensitivity platform for monitoring volatile compounds. His research primarily focuses on the applications of direct injection mass spectrometry in food science and technology: rapid product characterization, phenotyping, online process monitoring, correlation of food volatile compound profiles with sensory and genomic analysis, as well as breath and nose-space analysis. Additionally, he possesses expertise in multivariate analysis and data mining methods applied to mass spectrometry and sensory data. He has contributed to various national and international projects and collaborated with major multinational companies.

    https://sensorylab.fmach.it/home

  • Dr. Jose-Antonio Piornos-Martinez

    INRAE, France

    Dr. Piornos-Martinez research area is in flavour chemistry with a focus on the identification and formation of aromas in foods. He completed his PhD in the University of Reading, working on the identification, quantification and formation of aroma volatile compounds in alcohol-free beer. He also has experience in sensory evaluation and data analysis, and in the determination and calculation of perception thresholds. He has developed mechanistic kinetic models for the formation of aroma compounds and aldehydes in malt formed through the Maillard reaction. Dr. the formation of aroma compounds, is currently a researcher at the Centre for Taste and Feeding Behaviour of INRAE in Dijon (France), where he leads research in the Flavour, Food Oral Processing and Perception (FFOPP) group.

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jose-Piornos-2

     

  • Associate Professor Graham Eyres

    University of Otago, New Zealand

    Associate Professor Graham Eyres teaches and researches food chemistry, flavour science and brewing/fermentation. The objective of his research is to understand the factors that influence the sensory perception of flavour in foods by investigating the interactions between food, food processing, flavour chemistry and sensory science using advanced analytical methods.

    Graham’s flavour expertise is applied in a range of projects including (1) the impact of food processing on food quality, (2) impact of ingredients and fermentation on beer flavour and quality, (3) analysis of volatiles in exhaled breath as a non-invasive measure of metabolism and health status, and (4) analysis of volatiles in vaping e‑liquids and aerosols.

    Graham is a professional member of the New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology (NZIFST) and active as the Otago-Southland branch secretary. Graham was on the conference organizing committee in 2022 and is the conference chair for the 2023 conference in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Graham is Associate Investigator in the Riddet Institute and member of Food Waste Innovation, a University of Otago research theme.

    https://www.otago.ac.nz/food-science/our-people-in-food-science/associate-professor-graham-eyres

  • Prof. Corinna Dawid

    Technical University Munich, Germany

    Prof. Dawid (*1982) focuses on the screening, identification and quantification of bioactive, sensory active and techno-functional natural compounds in food and plant raw materials as well as their human metabolism. She has a special focus on metabolites that are upregulated by abiotic and biotic stress factors in crops. After her studies of food chemistry at the University of Münster, Prof. Dawid started her doctoral studies with Prof. Dr. Thomas F. Hofmann in Münster. In 2007 she followed her doctoral supervisor to the Weihenstephan Science Centre of the TUM where she completed her doctorate and did a postdoctoral research. During a research stay at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, she was instrumental in establishing the Institute for Molecular Sensor Technology. Back in Munich she began her habilitation with studies on stress resistance in plants. After the appointment of Hofmann as President of the TUM, Prof. Dawid took over the provisional leadership of the Chair of Food Chemistry and Molecular Sensor Technology. Since 2020 she is also a member of the ZIEL Institute for Food and Health and deputy director of the Bavarian Centre for Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry (BayBioMS).

    https://www.professoren.tum.de/en/dawid-corinna

  • Chiara Cordero

    University of Turin, Italy

    Chiara Cordero received her Master Degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology in 1998 with “summa cum laude” at the University of Torino. Thanks to her curriculum studiorum she was awarded with the Silver Medal (Medaglia d’argento dell’Università di Torino) as best graduate student in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology for the Academic Year 1996/97. In December 1998 she passed the Italian Pharmacist Licensure Examination. After graduation Chiara had direct access to a post-doc grant (“Assegno di Collaborazione all’Attività di Ricerca code 14-055 – November 1998/October 2001) from Turin University for a research activity focused on the development of fast and automatic analytical methods to quantify pesticide residues in food. Since July 2021 Chiara Cordero is Full Professor of Food Chemistry (CHIM/10 – Food Chemistry) at the Dipartimento di Scienza e Tecnologia del Farmaco of the University of Torino. In 2008 Prof. Cordero was Research Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Lebensmittelchemie – DFA (German Research Center for Food Chemistry) at the Lehrstuhl für Lebensmittelchemie der Technischen Universität München – Garching (Germany) under the supervision of Prof. Peter Schieberle; in 2019 Visiting Professor at Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poznan, Poland and in 2020 Visiting Professor at Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

    https://www.farmacia-dstf.unito.it/persone/chiara.cordero

  • Assistant Professor Sylvester Holt

    University of Copenhagen, Denmark

    Introducing savory flavors in plant-based food through solid-state fermentation

    Sylvester Holt has a background in biochemistry and biotechnology, and the majority of his career has been dedicated to studying aroma generation by enzymes and yeasts. Sylvester uses PTR-MS and GC-MS techniques for aroma profiling in foods and beverages. His focus is to gain an understanding of the dynamic release of aroma compounds from food products through online PTR-MS measurements. Specifically, he aims to design new projects within the dynamic aroma release of plant-based foods, incorporating elements of colloid chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, and biotechnology through collaboration with academic and industrial partners.

    https://food.ku.dk/english/staff/?pure=en/persons/246300

  • Prof. Paul Breslin

    Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA

    Paul Breslin is a geneticist and biologist. He is most notable for his work in taste perception and oral irritation, in humans as well as in Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly. He is a member of the faculty at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and acts as director of the Science Apprenticeship Program.

    He is interested in human oral perception and its genetic basis. The primary focus of his work is on taste perception with an emphasis on taste discrimination, taste enhancement and suppression, and taste localization. He also studies oral irritation/chemesthesis, mouthfeel, and astringency. The interactions among gustation, chemesthesis, and olfaction that comprise flavor are the topic of an ongoing research program that includes fMRI as a tool to understand regional brain involvement. In addition to human research, he conduct parallel genetic studies of the chemical senses in his Fly Lab, which uses Drosophila melanogaster as a model.

    https://monell.org/paul-breslin/

  • Associate Professor Ni Yang

    University of Nottingham, UK

    Dr Ni Yang (Nicole) is an Associate Professor in Flavour Science at the University of Nottingham and the laboratory Manager for Food and Feed Analysis Consultancy and Training Service (http://nottingham.ac.uk/facts). She is the Admission Tutor for Food Science related course (BSc/MSci Food Science, BSc/MSci Food Science and Nutrition). She is a member of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee at the School of Biosciences.

    Her research aims to shape a sustainable flavour system by embedding flavour science from soil and plant, processing and production, to consumption and health. Her current research includes flavour chemistry applied to the fields of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and trigeminal sensations (e.g., chilli), whilst developing novel multimodal training approaches for parosmia post-COVID-19 and anosmia in the elderly.

    Dr Yang has over 10-years of experience in transferring and applying flavour science and technology to various industries and applications. She successfully completed over 35 commercial projects over the recent 6 years, which included working with 10 blue-chip global food companies and 15 Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises on a range of food products such as ice cream, biscuits, crisps and pet food.

    With her passion and experience in managing knowledge transferable projects, she is also actively applying her knowledge and skills to a wide range of activities, such as exploring collaboration opportunities globally. She has strong links in China and is developing a collaborative platform internally and internationally. She published 25 joint papers in international-standard peer-reviewed intentional journals.

    She is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC), the member of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (MIFST), and fellow of The Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

    https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/biosciences/people/ni.yang

  • Dr. Igor Bodnar

    DSM-Firmenich

    “Plant proteins and flavors: unhappy marriage?”

    Igor Bodnár is Innovation Director in the Taste & Beyond Division of Firmenich, leading a team on decoding performance insights, working on flavour release from food and delivery systems, and incorporating these findings into digital systems. Igor received his PhD in physical and colloid chemistry from Utrecht University. After a post-doc in chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, US, he moved to the food industry in the science area of Product Microstructure at Unilever Research in Vlaardingen (the Netherlands). He continued his career at NIZO food research, as project manager, principal scientist and group leader Flavour & Texture Design. Since 2010 he is employed by Firmenich in Geneva (CH), continuing his work in the area of physical chemistry of food and flavour systems, including food structuring, texture and encapsulation. The main lines of his current work include connecting the interactions between flavours and the food matrix, and how flavour release is impacting the subsequent sensorial perception.

    https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Igor-Bodnar-2046468007

Got questions?

Don’t hesitate to contact us

Laura van der Parre

Conference coordinator Zonderzorg