Plenary Speakers

Professor Sun heads the Food Refrigeration & Computerized Food Technology center at University College Dublin and is the head of International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering. Professor Da-Wen Sun is an Academician of six academies including Royal Irish Academy, Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe), Polish Academy of Sciences, International Academy of Food Science and Technology, International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, and International Academy of Refrigeration. He is also the Founding President of International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (iAABE), Honorary President of International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR), and the Editor-in-Chief of "Food and Bioprocess Technology".

Dr. Claudia Cerella is a research scientist and Cell Death team leader at Fondation “Recherche sur le Cancer et les Maladies du Sang" (Luxembourg). Her research interests cover the elucidation of the mechanisms inducing death in cancer cells and the identification of predictive biomarkers of therapeutic response to novel personalized therapeutic strategies, based on new lead anti-cancer agents discovered from natural sources (marine and plant). Hematological malignancies and solid tumors of lung and colorectal origin are her major area of investigation. She will do a speech titled "Data-driven identification of predictive markers of response to natural compounds in cancer" during the "Functional Foods and Preventive Medicine" session.

Denis Baranenko, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Head of the International Research Centre "Biotechnologies of the Third Millennium" at ITMO University. Research interests cover a wide range of scientific topics, which include biologically active substances for the prevention of cancer, neurodegenerative and other diseases, biotechnological functionalization of alternative and secondary food raw materials, innovative technologies of food shelf life extension.

He has published more than 100 scientific papers, the author of more than 10 inventions, the principal investigator of more than 10 research projects, including programs of the President of the Russian Federation, Federal target programs and international projects. He was awarded scholarships of the President of the Russian Federation, Governor and Government of St. Petersburg, a permanent member of the scientific committees of several international conferences and international academic exchange programs.

Dr. Sueli Rodrigues is a full professor at the Food Engineering Department at the Federal University of Ceará (Brazil). She was ranked among the most influential scientists in the world in 2020, according to a study published by the prestigious scientific journal PLOS Biology. She works mainly on the following topics: product and process development, use of regional and low-cost raw materials, non-thermal processing and emerging technologies, use of agro-industrial waste, biotechnological processes, enzymatic systems, chromatography and fruit processing. Prof. Rodrigues will make a speech on "Non-thermal processing of prebiotic juices" during the "Food Processing and Process Control" session. 

She published more than 150 complete articles in indexed journals and more than 200 communications in conferences. She is a reviewer of several international journals, Associate Editor of Food and Bioprocess Technology (Springer) and Food Science and Technology (Scielo). She was a member of the Innovation Chamber of FUNCAP-CE from 2012 to 2018 and was a member of the Public Innovation Chamber of FUNCAP-CE since 2019. Dr. Sueli Rodrigues supervised 50 Bachelor's students (scientific initiation) and 25 Master's and 13 PhD students as principal advisor and supervised 11 postdoctoral fellows. She has a collaboration with several institutions such as Departments of Chemical Engineering of UFRN, Embrapa Tropical Agroindustry, UFPE, UFRPE, Department of Food Technology of UFS, IFRJ- Rio de Janeiro, Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT-Ireland); Teagasc (Ireland), University of Minho (Portugal) and Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.

Dr. Afaf Kamal-Eldin is a professor and a chair of the Department of Food Science at the United Arab Emirates University (UAE). Her research interests are related to issues of food and health with a focus on antioxidants and antioxidant mechanisms, bioactive compounds in food, and nutritional biomarkers. Prof. Kamal-Eldin will make a presentation titled "Camel Milk – An Interesting Raw Material for the Food Industry" during the "Biotechnology, Food and Nutrition" session.

Dr. Afaf Kamal-Eldin is a professor of Food Science specialized in the area of food composition and analysis with particular emphasis on bioactive compounds in foods. Prof. Kamal-Eldin earned her BSc and MSc degrees in Chemistry from the University of Khartoum, Sudan in 1986 and 1990, and in 1993, she earned her PhD from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala. While at SLU, she has led research in the area of lipid oxidation and antioxidants and is well known in this area since 1996. She has edited six books and published about 200 original papers and review articles on the subject. Prof. Kamal-Eldin has supervised 17 PhD theses and 14 MSc theses. In 2009, Prof. Afaf was recognized as one of 400 leading researchers in Life Sciences in Stockholm-Uppsala (Sweden) and in 2010, she received the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences’ Silver medal for great achievements during 2003-2012.

Prof. Afaf was a member in the reference group of the International Program in Chemical Sciences (IPICS), part of ISP – The International Science Programs at Uppsala University since 2003, she is an advisor to the Food Science program at the International Foundation of Science (IFS), Stockholm, Sweden.

After 20 years of research at the SLU, she has joined United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) in 2010 where she was Chair of the Department of Food Science (2010-2016) and Acting Dean for the College of Food and Agriculture (2015-2016).

Prof. Afaf was elected as an IAS Fellow in 2016.

Dr. Chin-Kun Wang is a distinguished professor in Chung Shan Medical University, Council member of International Academy of Food Science and Technology., Former President of International Society for Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods (ISNFF), Fellows of International Academy of Food Science & Technology; ISNFF, honorary president of Nutrition Society of Taiwan, Chair, Global Incident Alert Network, Global Harmonization Initiative. He got his MD, Ph.D. degree from National Taiwan University and worked at Chung Shan Medical University in 1993. In 1996, he promoted as a full professor, and then took the positions of the Chair, Dean, Vice President and President in Chung Shan Medical University. His research work is focused on human clinical trials and human metabolism of medicine, nutritional supplement, nutraceuticals, herbs, and functional foods. He got the National Award of Biomedicine for his great contribution to the medical education in 2008. He was also honored as 2012-21 Who’s who in the world, Who’s who in Asia, and 2009-2010, 2011-21 Who’s who in Medicine and Healthcare. He also got the awards of outstanding research from several societies from 2009 to 2021. Dr. Chin-Kun Wang was the former president of Nutrition Society of Taiwan (from 2009 to 2012). For food safety and nutrition, he promoted the legislation for school sanitary law and national nutrition law. During the food safety problem in Taiwan, he jointed as a director of ILSI Taiwan and Chair of Global Harmonization Initiative to communicate with the media and press. He believes that scientific evidence is the best support for food safety and world nutrition problem. In the future, he tries his best to work together with the scientists around the world by network.

Pedro A. García got his integrated Master in Chemistry in 1980 and a PhD in Chemistry in 1985 at the University of Valladolid (Spain). Currently he has a position of Professor of Environmental Technology at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology of the University of Valladolid, and Head of the Research Institute of Sustainable Processes (ISP) of the University of Valladolid.

His research activity has been developed in the field of waste and wastewater treatment, with special emphasis on the application of biological processes. This activity began in 1982 when Prof. García started his PhD in application of anaerobic fluidized bed reactors for wastewater treatment. Besides application of anaerobic processes for municipal and industrial wastewater, research moved to biological nutrients removal including nitrification, denitrification and biological phosphorous removal. Related with this research line, special attention has been paid to the use of microalgae processes for nutrients removal from wastewater and the treatments of gaseous streams with a high CO2 content and subsequent exploitation of the produced biomass as a whole or fractioning it. For characterisation and monitoring of the bacteria involved in biological waste treatment and to increase the knowledge of biological processes involved in treatment systems different molecular technics (FISH; PCR; DGGE; qPCR…) were used. With these technics, the influence of environmental parameters and operation variables over populations dynamics were studied, and obtained data can be used to improve wastewater treatment control. In the last years the behaviour of micropollutants, as pharmaceuticals and other emerging pollutants in wastewater treatment systems has started to be studied both to determine their biodegradability as the possible interference in the system.

MSc in Agricultural Sciences at the University of Bologna, curriculum of Food Biotechnology; PhD in Food Biotechnology. From 2000 to now Full Professor of Food Science and Technology and Coordinator of the Bachelor Degree Course in Food Technology at the University of Bologna, Campus of Food Sciences of Cesena. From January 2011 to 2018 Director of the CIRI agro-food industry (Interdepartimental Centre on Agrifood Industrial Research) of the University of Bologna. Author of about 300 scientific papers, speaker in over 200 events in Italy and abroad (H-index Google Scholar 41 SCOPUS 32). Scientific responsible for regional and national research projects, coordinator of the EU FOODSPROCESS (Marie Curie) project and U.O. of EU projects: FAIR: CA on osmotic dehydration; KBBE: Heatox, CHANCE, Track-Fast, Rescape, Core Organic Plus Ecoberries, and FoodNet, Iseki Food 1-2-3-4. ISEKI_Mundus 1-2). Chair of the EFFoST Conference (2013) and co-chair of the Foodinnova® Conference in Cesena (2017). Chair of the Value Chain FoodQST in the frame of the CLUST-ER Agri-food sector of the Emilia Romagna Region.