Speakers 2024 – FoodTech congress – Food and feed research

Pedro Silva

Technology Transfer Director

Senior technology transfer professional with 20+ years of experience in the field. Raised 600+ million euros in research funding in the context of university – industry collaborations, managed 300+ patents, negotiated 60+ license agreements and supported the creation of 40+ startups. From 2010, after work experience in the US, increasing focus on life sciences tech transfer and start-up creation, and the development of strategic initiatives to strengthen the biomedical industry in Portugal. Served as a consultant to start-ups, SMEs, large corporations, and other public and private organizations in strategy, business development, innovation management, intellectual property, licensing, and fundraising.

Ewa Pejcz

Ewa Pejcz

Assistant Professor

A Ph.D. in Food Technology and Human Nutrition was awarded in 2016 from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. Interested in the roles of fiber and sourdough fermentation in cereals, aiming to enhance nutritional value and functionality.

Led multiple projects, including pigmented corn processing and the development of low-FODMAP bread. Author of numerous scientific articles and conference presentations. Currently employed at the Department of Biotechnology and Food Analysis at the Wroclaw University of Economics. Active in research on bioactive compounds and their health benefits.

Jana Klopchevska

Associate Professor

Jana Klopchevska is an associate professor and researcher at the Department of Food Technology and Biotechnology at the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. She has developed her research at the University of Maribor, TU Graz, and TU Darmstadt, in several fields of chemical engineering and biotechnology, during her PhD studies.

She acted as an interim vice-dean for teaching her institution for two years. In the past, she dedicated herself to the position of project manager and leader on IPA 2014 in the Food and Veterinary agency in Skopje, as a consultant and facilitator for the implementation of the National Food Safety Strategy in Macedonia until 2020.

Also had a position as a project coordinator for UNDP Acceleration Laboratory Macedonia and a management board position at Open City Biotechnology Laboratory. Has a well-established national evaluator and consultant position in the food industry. Founder of Les. Scientist, a start-up for molecular gastronomy, and mixology company that has been active for more than 8 years in the field of applicative gastronomy and mixology.

Ιoannis Mourtzinos

Ιoannis Mourtzinos

Associate Professor

Ιoannis Mourtzinos is an Associate Professor in Food Chemistry and Analysis in the Dept. of Food Science and Technology, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He worked in the R&D department of PEPSICO-IVI and also in the R&D and QA/QC departments of APIVITA.

His research interests include the extraction and characterization of plants’ bioactive ingredients, encapsulation of nutraceutical compounds and the study of antioxidants during heat treatment. He is the author/co-author of 86 peer-reviewed publications (SCI journals) and (h-factor 23). He was the principal investigator in 8 research projects and he has three patents.

Saša Kenig

Saša Kenig

Associate Professor

Saša Kenig obtained her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana and continued her research at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and Elettra-Sincrotrone in Trieste.

She is a senior researcher and assistant professor at UP Faculty of Health Sciences. She is a lecturer in cell biology and clinical biochemistry and has supervised over 50 Bachelor’s and Master’s theses and three PhDs.

Her research mainly focuses on the impact of different dietary patterns or functional foods on health, particularly on combating obesity and metabolic syndrome, which has resulted in 40 peer-reviewed manuscripts and chapters.

Ksenija Nešić

Principal Research Fellow, Chair of the Scientific Board

DVM, PhD Ksenija Nesic was educated at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Belgrade, and further trained in Switzerland, the USA and Germany. Her main field of research is nutritional toxicology, predominantly mycotoxicology, as well as the study of other undesirable and harmful ingredients with a view to their detection and prevention of foodborne diseases.

Another scientific focus is the improvement of laboratory methods for feed control and the modulation of the nutritional properties of foods of animal origin based on animal nutrition. International collaborations, memberships in national and international associations and editorial boards of scientific journals are significant.

Vincenzo Lippolis

Senior Researcher

Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sciences of Food Production, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISPA) (Bari, Italy). Analytical chemist with more than twenty-years of experience in analytical methods for food safety, quality and authenticity. He has expertise on development and validation of targeted and untargeted methods based on several techniques (SPME-GC/MS, e-nose, MS-nose, DART-HRMS, NMR and FT-IR) for food authenticity and quality.

He has specific expertise on development and validation of conventional (HPLC, LC-MS) and rapid/innovative methods (fluorescence polarization immunoassays, lateral flow immunoassays, e-nose and FT-IR) for mycotoxin determination in food and feed products. He is involved in several national and EU-funded projects relevant to food safety and authenticity.

Mia Eeckhout

Mia Eeckhout

Professor Food and Feed Technology

Mia Eeckhout is a senior full professor at Ghent University. She is teaching Feed Technology for M.Sc. students since 1989 and performs research in this domain for over 30 years. She conducts applied scientific research in the field of compound feed production at the request of and in close collaboration with the Belgian animal feed industry.

She coordinated numerous research projects in a Belgian, European and global context on innovative feed ingredients, feed technology and feed safety. From 2015 to 2020 she was chair of the public-private platform Feed Design Lab, Wanssum, the Netherlands.

Tanja Radusin

Senior Researcher

Tanja Radusin is an experienced researcher holding an MSc degree in polymer materials and PhD in food packaging applications from Faculty of Technology, University of Novi Sad.

She has 20 years of experience in both industrial and academic areas of plastic packaging applications and extensive knowledge in regulatory requirements within the global plastic packaging and recycling field. Her expertise was built up additionally with the 2-year Post doc position at Nofima AS financed by Research Council of Norway.

Currently she is holding the position of Senior Researcher at Norner Research AS and is a leading auditor for RecyClass recyclability certification.

Elena Velickova Nikova

Full Professor

Elena Velickova Nikova is professor and researcher at the Department of Food Technology and Biotechnology at the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, Sts Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. She has developed her research among North Macedonia, Portugal, Bulgaria, Sweden and Italy in several fields of food technology and biotechnology.

Her previous/current activities involve: immobilization of cells and their application in various processes; non-thermal preservation of strawberries via freezing, vacuum infusion, pulse electriec field treatment and edible films; vacuum infusion of apples and their characterization (texture, color, respiration rate, metabolic heat production, TD-NMR, microscopy); edible films for intelligent packaging and sensory analysis and consumer perception.

She has published around 20 papers, 2 book chapters, 23 papers in proceedings, 5 oral presentations and more than 40 conference posters and several exhibitions in fairs. She supervised undergraduate works (40) master thesis (2) and doctoral thesis (1) and participated in organization of professional trainings (3) and congresses (3).

Gianfranco Romanazzi

Professor

Gianfranco Romanazzi is a graduate with honours from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Bari, where he got a Ph.D. in crop protection, and is a professor of Plant Pathology at the Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy.

He has experience in studying diseases of fresh fruit and vegetables, both in the field and postharvest, setting up sustainable strategies to manage plant diseases with alternatives to synthetic pesticides. He is President of Italian Association for Plant Protection (AIPP), Chair of ISPP Seed Pathology Committee and Chair of COST CA22134 Action FoodWaStop. H-Index 40.

Antonio Moretti

Director ad interim

Since March 2023, Director ad interim at Institute of Sciences of Food Production (ISPA) of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), where he works from 1989. The areas of work are Food Mycology, Plant Pathology, Mycotoxicology and Fungal genetics, with main field of interest the mycotoxin profile, genetic diversity, and pathogenicity of main Fusarium, Alternaria, and Aspergillus, species, pathogens of agriculturally important crops.

Member of the National Scientific Committee of CNR in 2022-2023, Secretary of International Society of Mycotoxicology. Research activity of Dr. Moretti is well documented by around 180 papers on International Journals and book chapters ISI. H-index of Antonio Moretti: 47 (ISI Web of Science), 52 (Scopus), 62 (Google Scholar).

Louise Dye

Co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield

Louise is a Chartered Health Psychologist and Co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield. Her research examines effects of nutrition on cognitive function, health and wellbeing and how to encourage and sustain dietary behaviour change at individual, organisational and societal levels. Her work on breakfast and cognition highlights the importance of diet in children and food insecurity.

Louise is Co-Director of the SFI/DAERA/UKRI funded Co-Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and leads a workpackage on increasing dietary fibre intake in low income consumers in the UKRI funded H3 project (www.h3.ac.uk). She is co-Chair of the health and wellbeing pillar of the Leeds Food Strategy for Leeds City Council and a former President of ILSI Europe and ILSI Global. She also chaired BBSRC Strategy Panel on Biosciences for an integrated understanding of health.

Branislav Šojić

Assistant Professor

Branislav Šojić is assistant professor at Faculty of Technology Novi Sad. He is scientist in the field of Meat processing, food preservation, sensory evaluation and nutritional value of food.

He pays special attention to the valorization of food industry by-products as potential antioxidants in meat processing.

Dr Branislav Šojić has more than 90 published or accepted peer reviewed manuscripts with most of them in high impact factor journals in the Food Science and Technology area (h-index: 22; 1327 citations from Scopus). In December 2016, he received the Special award of University of Novi Sad, Dr Zoran Đinđić for entire contribution for science.

Predrag Putnik

Senior research associate

Prof. Predrag Putnik, has background in chemistry, food science, nutrition, and industrial food engineering. He is formally trained as scientific reviewer for the statistical analysis (research methodology) and serves as registered expert evaluator for the European Commission (Prima, Horizons etc.). He has +140 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters, where most of the journals have the highest impact factor (Q1) for food science and technology. He co-edited books “Agri-Food Industry Strategies for Healthy Diets and Sustainability,” Elsevier and Sustainable Functional Food Processing, MDPI. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief: Food Safety and Health, Wiley and Co-Editor-in-Chief: Future Postharvest and Food, Wiley, and member of the Editorial Boards of FOODS and Nanomaterials MDPI, and Elsevier’s “Food Research International,” “Food Control,” and “Food Engineering Reviews” from Springer. He received awards: Top 2% of scientist by Stanford University (2019-2022); Tanner Award (2021) for the most-cited paper in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety (Q1); and Highly Cited Researcher ranked in the top 0.1% by citations for Agricultural Sciences by the Clarivate’s Web of Science™ (2021-2023). ORCID

Danijela Bursać Kovačević

Associate Professor

PhD Danijela Bursać Kovačević is a distinguished Croatian researcher and associate professor with international recognition and influence in the field of food science and technology. She is a member of the editorial boards of several WoS journals and author of more than 200 papers and book chapters. Currently, she is a PI for the EU PRIMA project „From Edible Sprouts to Healthy Food – Feed“ (Prima Call 2022, Prima Section 2) and the project “Hurdle technology and 3D printing for sustainable fruit juice processing and preservation” (IP-2019-04-2105). In 2021-2023 she was elected as Highly Cited Researcher ranked in the top 0.1% by citations for Agricultural Sciences by the Web of Science™.

Mladen Brnčić

Full Professor

Mladen Brnčić, Full Professor is the Head of the Laboratory for Thermodynamics at the Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He has an extensive research portfolio with over 250 peer-reviewed publications and numerous contributions to international conferences as a plenary and invited speaker. His career has been dedicated to advancing novel food processing technologies, particularly non-thermal methods. He has served as a coordinator and researcher in various national and international projects focused on non-thermal food processing, food waste and by-product valorization. Professor Brnčić is an active member of several national and European professional societies in the field of Food Science and Technology. In 2018, Professor Brnčić was elected as a Fellow of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology (IAFoST). He also serves as an Associate Editor and Editorial Board member for more than 20 prestigious journals in Food Technology.

Mian Riaz

Mian N. Riaz

Professorship of Food Diversity

Dr. Mian N. Riaz is Associate Dept. Head in the Dept. of Food Science and Technology at Texas A&M University, USA. His first academic appointment was in 1992 at Food Protein R&D Center (FPRDC), where he was put in charge of the Food and Feed Extrusion Program and went on to become the head of the Extrusion Program. He served as Director FPRDC from 2005 to March 31, 2020. Currently, he offers 5 courses every year in food and feed extrusion. He has published seven books (three of them on extrusion technology) 28 chapters and more than 163 papers.

Prof. Dr. Jelka Pleadin

Scientific Advisor in Tenure; Assistant Director; Head of Department for Veterinary Public Health

Prof. Dr. Jelka Pleadin is a scientific advisor in tenure in the field of biotechnical sciences at the Croatian Veterinary Institute. She is a lecturer for several undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the field of food quality and safety. She has published two university books, 13 book chapters and over 300 articles in scientific journals and has led or participated in numerous scientific projects. She has been a committee member and invited speaker at many national and international scientific conferences. Prof. Dr. Pleadin was awarded the National Science Award in the field of biotechnological sciences. She was Head of the Analytical Chemistry Laboratory and Chair of the Scientific Council and is currently Assistant Director of the Institute and Head of the Department for Veterinary Public Health.

Krzysztof Klincewicz

Professor, Director of Centre for Socially Responsible Innovations

Prof. Krzysztof Klincewicz – director of Centre for Socially Responsible Innovations, University of Warsaw. He specializes in the management of technology and innovation, including the participation of consumers in innovation and commercialization of research infrastructures. He worked in the hightech industry in Poland, Finland and the UK and at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Former member of the UN Technology Executive Committee, expert at the Research and Innovation Observatory of the European Commission-JRC, former member of the management of EIT Food. He coordinates EIT Food RIS Consumer Engagement Labs project, enabling companies to co-create new food products with consumers.

Ivana Branković Lazić

Assistant Director for Scientific-Technical Cooperation

Ivana Branković Lazić is Senior Research Associate at Institute of Meat Hygiene and Technology. She completed her PhD at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Belgrade. The scientific research and professional work is reflected in the number and quality of published works at the national and international level. She was involved in the implementation of several national and international projects. Large part of her scientific research is dedicated to safety and quality of food of animal origin.

Igor Tomašević

Full Professor

Full Professor working at University of Belgrade (Serbia) and a Guest Professor at University of Life Sciences in Lublin (Poland). In 2022/23 he was a guest research associate at German Institute for Food Technology (DIL). He has supervised 10 PhD thesis at University of Belgrade and served as a PhD thesis external evaluator at University of Oviedo (3), Milan (1), and Hohenheim (2). So far, he has coauthored 200+ papers in journals included in the ISI Web of Knowledge (4.000+ citations; h-index=35). For the last 2 years he has been listed in the World’s Top 2% Scientists database by the Stanford University.

Francesco Marra

Associate Professor of Chemical and Food Engineering

Francesco Marra, PhD in chemical engineering, is an associate professor of chemical and food engineering for the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Salerno, Italy. His research focuses on the use of digital tools, based on transport phenomena modelling in a multiphysics context, as design tools for innovative food processes and products. He has authored over 100 scientific works, which have been published in international journals and books and presented at international conferences. A member of the editorial boards for the Journal of Food Engineering and the Journal of Food Process Engineering, he served as editor for a special issue, ”Virtualization of Processes in Food Engineering”, for the former.

Member of the executive committee for the Society of Food Engineering (SoFE).

Co-Chair of the International School on Modeling and Simulation in Food and Bio Processes (Italy, 2016, 2017, 2018; Serbia, 2020).

Fatih Ozogul

Director of Biotechnology Research and Application Center, Professor

Professor OZOGUL is a world-renowned scientist who is appreciated in the international scientific community with his numerous scientific researches and studies in the field of food science and technology. He has published more than 250 articles in internationally recognized journals, and has written 20 book chapters and edited 3 books published by international publishing companies. According to the rankings made by Stanford University, he has been on the list of the World’s Top 1% Scientist in Food Science for the last three years. Besides, he has become a highly cited researcher in the field of Agricultural Sciences, released by Clarivate Web of Science in 2023. He is the editor of the journals including “Food Bioscience”, “Frontiers in Microbiology” and “Measurement: Food”. He is also a member of the editorial board of “Trends in Food Science & Technology” and “Data in Brief” journals.

Diego Ángel Moreno-Fernández

CSIC Scientific Researcher

PhD in Biological Sciences (University of Granada, Spain, 2000). Postdoc Associate at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA, 2001-2004). Upon return to Spain as postdoc fellow (2005-2007, Ramón y Cajal Excellence Programme), achieved permanent position in 2008, as staff scientist. Current position and promotion to Research Scientist since 2018, and Head of Department of Food Science and Technology at CEBAS, CSIC, since 2021.

Researcher with experience in R&D and innovation activities on biostimulation of food composition for human health, with more than 25 years of experience in the design and evaluation of foods enriched in bioactive phytochemicals with therapeutic potential in obesity and chronic inflammation.

Brijesh Tiwari

Principal Research Officer

Professor Brijesh K Tiwari is a Principal Research Officer at TEAGASC and adjunct Professor at UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering. Professor Tiwari has an internationally recognised reputation for food engineering research as evidenced by his Highly Cited Researcher designation continuously since 2018 by Clarivates (Web of Science). He has published over 300 high impact peer reviewed journal papers. He leads a team of over 25 researchers including postdoctoral researchers and PhD students in the area of sustainable food processing and preservation technologies. His editorial responsibilities include Editor LWT – Food Science and Technology and Food Chemistry. He is also a fellow of IFST (UK), RSC (UK), AFSTI (India) and IUFoST.

Cristina M. Rosell

Full Professor and Head of Department/ Adjunct Professor in IATA-CSIC

Cristina M Rosell is Head of Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences in the University of Manitoba and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA) that belongs to the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). She was appointed Vicedirector (2011-2015) and Director of IATA (2015-2019). She has been involved in numerous National, European and International research projects related to cereals, grains and baked goods. She has more than three hundred international peer reviewed scientific publications and book chapters on the cereals topic.

Speakers FoodTech2024

5th International Congress “Food Technology, Quality and Safety”

Antonio Moretti

Brijesh Tiwari

Cristina M. Rosell

Diego Ángel Moreno-Fernández

Fatih Ozogul

Francesco Marra

Mian N. Riaz

Igor Tomašević

Ivana Branković Lazić

Krzysztof Klincewicz

Mladen Brnčić

David Steiner

Ewa Pejcz

Branislav Šojić

Danijela Bursać Kovačević

Jelka Pleadin

Predrag Putnik

Mia Eeckhout

Louise Dye

Gianfranco Romanazzi

Elena Velickova Nikova

Tanja Radusin

Saša Kenig

Vincenzo Lippolis

Ιoannis Mourtzinos

Jana Klopchevska

Ksenija Nešić

Pedro Silva

16-18. 10. 2024 Novi Sad, Serbia

Congress

ABOUT

5th International Congress
“Food Technology, Quality and Safety”

16-18. 10. 2024
Novi Sad, Serbia