SPEAKERS

Philip Marriott

is a professor in the School of Chemistry, Faculty of Science at Monash University, and deputy director of the Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS). His previous academic appointments were at the National University of Singapore and RMIT University. This was preceded by a postdoctoral position at the University of Bristol. His main research activities are in Analytical Chemistry, specifically gas chromatography (multidimensional G.C. and comprehensive 2D G.C.) with mass spectrometry.

He has supervised about 90 successful Honours, Master & PhD Research theses. He is a research leader in Separation Science, with primary experience in G.C., MDGC, GC×GC, mass spectrometry, extraction methods, extensive consultations, and collaborations with Industry. His research group has explored the basic technology, descriptions, and use of GC×GC, supported by a broad range of applications since the late 1990s. This includes pesticides, essential oils, fragrances, perfumes, allergens, fatty acids, amino acids, petrochemicals, natural products, and observations of novel processes in GC×GC based on chemical transformations. He is a patent holder for cryogenic modulation methodology in gas chromatography. He has published over 430 research papers and 30 book chapters, with 17400 citations and an h-index 59 (Scopus).

Janusz Pawliszyn

is the author of over 700 scientific publications and books on solid-phase microextraction. His Hirsch Index (H-index) is 106. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Chemical Institute of Canada, editor in chief of Trends in Analytical Chemistry and Green Analytical Chemistry. He received the 1995 McBryde Medal, the 1996 Tswett Medal, the 1996 Hyphenated Techniques in Chromatography Award, the 1996 Caledon Award, the Jubilee Medal 1998 from the Chromatographic Society, U.K., the 2000 Maxxam Award, the Alumni Achievement Award for 2000 from Southern Illinois University, the Humboldt Research Award for 2001, the 2002 COLACRO Medal, the 2008 A.A. Benedetti-Pichler Award from Eastern Analytical Symposium, and the 2008 Principal Manning Innovation Award, 2010 Torbern Bergman Medal from the Swedish Chemical Society, 2010 Marcel Golay Award, 2010 Ontario Premier’s Innovation Award, 2010 ACS Award in Separation Science and Technology, 2011 PittCon Dal Nogare Award, 2012 E.W.R. Steacie Award, 2013 CIC Environmental Research and Development Award, 2013 CIC LeSueur Memorial Award, 2015 Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medal from Polish Chemical Society, 2015 Halász Medal Award from the Hungarian Society for Separation Sciences, 2017 Pittsburgh Conference Analytical Chemistry Award, the 2017 Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Fields of Analytical Chemistry, 2018 ACS Award in Chromatography, 2018 North American Chemical Residue Workshop Excellence Award, 2019 Talanta Medal, 2022 Tswett-Nernst Award, 2023 CIC Medal, 2023 A.J.P Martin Medal from U.K. Chromatographic Society and 2023 IUPAC Analytical Chemistry Medal.. He presently holds the honorary University Professor position. Prof. Pawliszyn’s research has focused on developing a range of micro separation technologies with a primary emphasis on SPME, including the design and application of SPME devices, including matrix-compatible chemical biopsy probes with thin film geometries.

Thierry Thomas-Danguin

is a senior research scientist and specialist of chemosensory perception in humans. He has a background in chemistry (Ph.D.) associated to an expertise in psychophysics, psychophysiology and neurobiology of the chemical senses and a Habilitation in Food Sciences. For more than twenty years, He has been conducting research on the chemosensory and neurophysiological aspects of olfaction, gustation and chemesthesis.

The central aim of his research is to understand the role of perceptual interactions, induced by odor mixtures processing and cross-modal integration, in odor objects and food flavor coding and perception. In the context of his research centre, He is leading the Perceptual interactions and flavor perception Lab and he is responsible for the research theme on sensory interactions induced by the perception of mixtures of molecules contained in foods and detected by the chemical senses. The objective is to unravel the chemical and biological mechanisms of food flavor construction and perception in order to develop a healthier diet, but nonetheless tasty, which may be better appreciated by consumers and therefore contribute to their health and wellness in a sustainable way.

Devin Peterson

is a professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology at The Ohio State University. He earned a doctoral degree in Flavor Chemistry (2001) at the University of Minnesota. In 2001, Dr. Peterson joined the Department of Food Science faculty at Penn State University. During his tenure at Penn State, in 2004, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), which the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy presents. In 2009, Dr. Peterson returned to the University of Minnesota as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Professor in 2014. In 2016, he relocated his research program to The Ohio State University as part of the Discovery Themes Initiative.

He received the Excellence in Flavor Science Award from the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association in 2015 and the IFT Stephen Change Award for Lipid and Flavor Science in 2018. His research focuses on characterizing chemical stimuli that impart flavor to foodstuffs (taste, aroma, somatosensory), investigating multi-flavor interactions on perception, mapping pathways of flavor generation/stability, and mechanisms of flavor delivery. His program is based on a utility-inspired fundamental research platform with an overarching goal to get more from nature, guided by science, and to support the development of sustainable, nutritious, and healthy foods with higher product acceptability. He directs the Flavor Research and Education Center (http://frec.osu.edu/), a partnership between academic researchers and industry leaders focused on creating, exchanging, and applying knowledge to drive innovation in the food market.

Veronika Somoza

is the Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiological Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna. Her main area of research is identifying bioactive food constituents involved in the regulatory processes of digestion, satiety, and the metabolic consequences of dietary intake. Since an excess consumption of nutrients results in metabolic signals that initiate pro-inflammatory responses and damage metabolic homeostasis, the effect of food compounds on metabolic changes that affect pro-inflammatory and pro-oxidative processes in various cell types are also investigated. In addition to an enhanced micro-inflammatory state, overweight and obese subjects are at high risk for exaggerated acid secretion in the stomach, resulting in digestive discomfort, gastric irritations, or gastro-esophageal reflux disease.

For overweight people, satiating stomach-soothing foods would support the commonly recommended weight reduction. Therefore, food and food compounds affecting mechanisms of gastric acid secretion in human gastric cancer cells and in healthy subjects are also of interest to us. In general, activity-guided screening techniques are applied to complex food matrices through analytical, biochemical and molecular-biological methods in different test systems (cell culture models and human trials) to identify bioactive food compounds and verify their efficacy. Chemical identification and characterization of bioactive food components and their metabolites are performed using various analytical techniques, e.g., GPC, HPLC-UV/DAD/fluorescence, GCMS/MS, LCMS/MS, NMR, MALDI-TOF, as well as state-of-the-art biochemical methods, e.g. gene editing tools (siRNA knock-down, CRISPR-Cas9), real Time PCR, flow-cytometry, in different cell culture models, e.g., buccal, stomach, intestinal, liver and kidney cells as well as stably transfected kidney cells.

Imre Blank

studied Food Chemistry in Germany and holds a PhD in Flavor Chemistry from the Technical University of Munich (group of Prof. Werner Grosch). He joined the Nestlé Research Center (NRC) in 1991 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and worked for Nestlé Research for 28 years. He was first in charge of Flavor Science in NRC and then switched to product development (2005-2015), leading Science & Technology in Orbe (Switzerland), York (U.K.), and Singen (Germany). In 2015, he was nominated as the very first Nestlé Fellow (Food Chemistry and Flavor Generation) and was active as Head of the Global Nestlé R&D Networks until retirement. In 2019, Dr Blank took up a new challenge as Chief Scientific Officer leading R&D in the Zhejiang Yiming Food company until 2024, being awarded High-level Talent in 2021. He also started his own company (IBK Food & Beverage Consulting), which provides expert advice to food and flavor companies worldwide and start-ups working in plant-based food and precision fermentation. Dr. Blank’s dual career is motivated by “Connecting West and East in Food & Flavor Research (industry & academia) contributing to a better global understanding”.

From an academic perspective, in 2008, Dr Blank co-organized the 12th Weurman Flavor Research Symposium in Interlaken, Switzerland. Since 2010, he has been lecturing on Food Technology at the T.U. Munich and Chemistry of Food Processes at the École Polytechnique Fédéral Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He has been an Adjunct Professor (2021-2022) at the EWHA Womans University, Seoul, Korea, since 2020 Guest Professor at the Beijing Technology & Business University, and recently nominated Visiting Professor at the Ningxia University, China, working in the group of Prof. Yuan Liu. Recently, he has been nominated Associate Editor of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Dr. Blank’s areas of interest are food science and technology with a focus on flavor science, molecule-triggered perception, aroma & taste analytics, thermal and bio-induced flavor generation by Maillard-type reactions and lipid oxidation, reaction mechanisms, formation and mitigation of food-borne process contaminants, applied to all food categories such as culinary, coffee, beverages, confectionery, cereals, dairy, and pet food. He has participated in more than 100 international conferences. His research resulted in ca. 200 publications and patents, of which 140 peer-reviewed articles were cited more than 9200 times with an h-index of 48 (Research Gate).

Andrea Büttner

has had a distinguished career in academia and research. She studied Food Chemistry, subsequently completed her PhD in the field of aroma research, and was awarded her professorship in the field of flavor research. Since 2017, she has been leading the Chair of Aroma and Smell Research at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and holds this position until today. In April 2020, she was appointed Managing Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging (IVV). Additionally, she has taken on several significant roles, including group leader at acatech HORIZONTE Biotechnology in 2022, deputy head of the W.G. Packaging for the Normungsroadmap Circular Economy at DIN since October 2021, jury member of the EXIST Transfer of Research since May 2021, board member of VDI society materials engineering, and member of acatech, the National Academy of Science and Engineering, since October 2020.

Andrea Buettner’s career is marked by her contributions to elucidating contaminants in foods, packaging, and products of daily use, to aroma and smell research, and her leadership in various scientific and engineering organizations. As the Managing Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging (IVV), her responsibilities include leading research initiatives to enhance food safety and quality, develop sustainable packaging solutions, and promote circular economy practices. Additionally, she serves as the spokesperson for the Fraunhofer Agriculture and Food Industry Alliance, deputy spokesperson for the Fraunhofer Strategic Research Field Bioeconomy, and is a member of the Board of Management of the Fraunhofer Cluster Circular Plastics Economy CCPE®.

PREV. PAGE NEXT PAGE