Speakers

In 1990, Prof. Le Bail got his PhD in Heat Transfer and Fluid Dynamics from the University of Nantes, France. He is currently a professor at ONIRIS, Nantes-Atlantic National College of Food Science and Engineering and Veterinary Medicine.

He is working in the MAPS² group (Matrices, Process Properties, Structure Sensorial) within UMR 6144 GEPEA affiliated to the National Scientific Council for Research. His research themes concern the impact of processing on food structure and food functionality with a focus on baking technology and refrigeration mainly. Prof. Le Bail has supervised 35 PhD theses, published ca. 180 peer-reviewed papers & book chapters, and co-authored 9 patents. His h-index is 31 in WOS.

Dr. Li-Shu Wang is an associate professor at Medical College of Wisconsin (USA). Her research interests are in the fields of chemical carcinogenesis and cancer chemoprevention. During her post-doctoral training, her research was focused on the prevention of gastrointestinal cancers using berries, their active components and metabolites. Prof. Li-Shu Wang will make a presentation titled "A food-based approach for cancer immunoprevention" at the "Functional Foods and Preventive Medicine" session.

Dr. Ciro Isidoro is a full professor of General Pathology and Experimental Oncology at The University of Eastern Piedmont (Italy). His research interests are autophagy in cancer and in neurodegeneration, organelle biogenesis, vesicular traffic and diseases, ovarian cancer, nanotheranostics (‘in cell’ imaging). Prof. Isidoro will make a speech titled "Anticancer activity of Nutraceuticals and Probiotics" during the "Functional Foods and Preventive Medicine" session.

Professor Undurti N. Das performs translational research in the area of cancer, diabetes mellitus, lupus, coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis, sepsis and radiation protection. His lab studies led to a deeper understanding of the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids and their metabolism in several diseases that have the potential to be translated into newer therapeutic strategies. He will speak at the Functional Foods & Preventive Medicine section with a report on "N-6 linoleic and arachidonic acid in (for) COVID-19".

Associate Professor PhD Antonio Bevilacqua from The Department of Agricultural Sciences, Food, Natural Resources and Engineering in The University of Foggia (Italy). His research activity involves different topics of Food Microbiology. Some of the following issues that Antonio Bevilacqua focused on are Bioremediation of Olive Mill Wastewater, Probiotic microorganisms, Phenotyping and genotyping of some strains of Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris from soil and evaluation of some alternative methodologies to reduce the initial contamination of alicyclobacilli in fruit juices, Evaluation of the bioactivity of essential oils and other natural compounds and others.

Dr. Rimantas Venskutonis is a Professor at the Department of Food Science and Technology in The Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania). He is a member of IFT and ISNFF, for a long time he was a national delegate of Lithuania at the ISEKI-Food Association, the International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) and the Global Harmonisation Initiative (GHI). He is the Lithuanian National Science Award winner of 2004. Prof. Venskutonis will make a speech titled "Biorefining of berry processing by-products into healthy ingredients for functional foods, nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals" during the "Biotechnology, Food and Nutrition" session.

Associate Professor PhD Daniel Cozzolino is from The Centre for Nutrition and Food Sciences in The University of Queensland (Australia). His research focuses on the development of chemometric and spectroscopic methods for agriculture and food applications. Prof. Cozzolino's recent research projects have spanned to the authentication, fraud and origin of foods, the effect of climate change in food quality, identification of markers in biological tissues and other relevant scientific findings. Prof. Cozzolino will make a speech on "Novel applications of vibrational spectroscopy in food analysis" during the "Food Processing and Process Control" session.

Professor Dr. Danny N. Dhanasekaran is a Deputy Director for Basic Research at the Stephenson Cancer Center in The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (USA), Professor of Cell Biology, Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation Chair in Cancer Research. His major research focus has been to define oncogenic signaling pathways involved in cancer cell proliferation and metastasis. His research also focuses on functional foods and chemo-prevention in cancer. Prof. Dhanasekaran will make a speech titled “Phytochemicals in the fight against cancer - targeting non-coding RNAs" during the “Functional Foods and Preventive Medicine” session.

Dr. Francis Canon is director of research for the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE). He obtained his PhD in 2010 in food chemistry and biochemistry. He was a postdoctorant researcher at the Synchrotron SOLEIL in Paris on the beamline DISCO from 2010 to 2012. In 2012, he was recruited as a research scientist at the center for food and feeding behavior (CSGA) in Dijon. In 2020, he was promoted director of research and then was appointed co-head of the team “Flavor: from the molecule to the behavior”. His research interests focus on the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms involved in flavor perception, especially in aroma and astringency perception. He has recently proposed an alternative hypothesis to explain the molecular origin of astringency sensation and evidenced the importance of aroma metabolization in flavor perception. He performs multidisciplinary research combining biochemistry, analytical chemistry, biophysics, and sensory evaluation. He has published more than 50 papers, including articles in prestigious journals such as Angewandte Chemie International Edition or Journal of American Chemical Society. Since his recruitment in 2012, he has obtained two national grants from the French Agency for Research (ANR) as principal investigator and participated in numerous other projects.

Dr. Fabrice Neiers is an associate professor at the Bourgogne Franche Comté University and French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE). He obtained his PhD in 2007 in molecular enzymology. He leads a research team (30 peoples) at the Centre for Taste and Feeding Behavior located in Burgundy (France). He is currently studying the biochemistry of taste and smell in humans as well as in insects. Fabrice Neiers combine numerous approaches to link the chemical perception to the molecular mechanisms underlying this perception. The technics supporting his research work include enzymology, X-ray crystallography, immunohistochemistry, electronic microscopy, as well as sensory analysis. He is also the Scientific Director of the biotech platform focusing on recombinant protein expression and purification. He is the author of numerous publications, patents, and book chapters.