This page collect the information about the speakers invited to the FOX final conference “Small-Scale, Big Impact: Innovative Approaches for Local Food Processing” (Brussels, 26th September 2023). Click here for more information regarding the event.

Tobias Camps is Director Healthcare at Hutten. Hutten is a Dutch caterer, a leader in the field of recovery through better food in specialized healthcare, sustainability and side stream valorization. Look at the video and the live illustration made during the panel discussion he attended.

Christian Falkenstein is Project manager at Falkenstein Projektmanagement GmbH in Germany. He has been involved in engineering, management and advice services for the global food industry for over 25 years. In addition to factory planning services, his primary focuses are on digitalisation and green factory engineering for the realisation of carbon free factories. He is engaged to look for solutions to fight against world hunger. He is grounder of the smart factory association, the world food institute as well as member of the science network “Neues Kreislaufsystem 2+12” who analyse and develop in different process cascades solutions to preserve leftover food. Look at the video and the live illustration made during the panel discussion he attended.

Klaus G. Grunert is Professor of Marketing at Aarhus University, and is the founder of the MAPP Research Center. He is a consumer behaviour researcher with an interdisciplinary orientation. He has dealt with questions on the relationships of consumer decision-making, consumer values and attitudes, consumer experience and consumer lifestyle. In the FOX project, he is responsible for the work package on consumer studies. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustration made during his speech.

Peter Holl has been involved for more than a decade in pan-European Clinical Research for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, followed by some work in the REACH-program of the EU for chemicals. Now located in Brussels, he does take care to form European consortia to take part in European research and innovation calls and working on convincing action plans and strategies. He is also involved in EIT Food, working to make the food system more sustainable, healthy and trusted. Holl does co-head FOODforce, a round table of universities and Research Organisations in 16 EU active in the areas of food, nutrition and health. In FOX, he fills in the role or the Work Package leader for Dissemination and Exploitation. Look at look at the video and the live illustration made during the panel discussion he attended. 
 

Since 2013, Minna Huttunen is a Ministerial Adviser at the Food Safety Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Her areas of work include food and nutrition policy and sustainability of food systems including food waste reduction and pesticide residue legislation. Huttunen is a member of the National Nutrition Council (2014-), national representative to the European food loss and waste platform and a co-coordinator of the food systems working group under the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR). Prior to the governmental career, she had a business career in food industry. She has a Her PhD on food science and her academic research was conducted at the University of Helsinki and the University of Michigan, USA. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustrations made during speech (video and illustration) and the panel discussion she attended (video and illustration).

Ana Patricia Lopez is Research programme officer ‘Research & Innovation’ in DG AGRI, European Commission, where she is responsible for the coordination of Research and Innovation programming under EU research programmes and policy officer for agriculture and food projects. Previously, she was Senior Manager at FoodDrinkEurope, the European Federation of Food and Dink producers, where she was in charge with Circular Economy and Environmental dossiers. She studied Environmental Sciences and European policies in Alcala de Henares, Lyon and Brussels. Look at the video and the live illustration made during her speech. 
 

Anita Kušar is Assistant Professor. Her research is focus on nutrition and public health, food labelling and promotion of foods. She is specialized in the field of food labelling and substances of plant origin. She holds a PhD in Agronomy (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia). She is involved in several national and European research projects in the field of nutrition in public health, food labelling and researches related to the production of agricultural crops for the provision of safe and quality food. She is leading the module “Pharmacognosy” at the Higher School of Applied Sciences (VIST). She has authored numerous contributions in renown journals of nutrition & food safety. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustration made during her speech.

Ariette Matser is expertise leader of Food Processing Technology at Wageningen University. Her main research focus is on sustainable food processing. Her activities include project acquisition and coordination of national and international projects. She is the project coordinator of the Public Private Partnership called Plant Meat Matters. Together with industrial partners and Wageningen University and Wageningen Research this basis will be used to further develop technologies for making the next generation of consumer-accepted meat analogues with improved characteristics that can be produced more cost-effectively and will have reduced environmental impact. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustrations made during her speech (video and illustration) and during the panel discussion she attended (video and illustration).

Marja Liisa Meurice has over twenty years of experience in innovation management within organizations. Her work has provided insights for transformation and opportunities through innovation and R&D. Collaboration with major Global and European companies has allowed building a solid network with European Innovation leaders. Today as head of EIT Food North and East Region Meurice is driving the change for the agri-food sector with the Partners and Programmes of the EIT Food. Look at the video and the live illustration made during the panel discussion she attended.
 

Björn Moller is a physicist and engineer and works as a Trend Researcher and Futurist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI. He supports clients and customers in recognizing and analysing signals, trends and possible future developments and in preparing them in a structured manner for their own needs. His focus is on the scientific investigation of questions concerning the drivers of change in societies, technologies and markets, such as “What changes are foreseeable?“ or “What could surprise us?“. In this way, he supports companies in the early recognition of opportunities in future markets and the development of robust future strategies. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustration made during his speech.

Małgorzata Nowacka is Associate Professor at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. She is a specialist in food drying, the application of non-thermal food processing methods, food storage and safety, and packaging. Her research interests focus on engineering issues in food technology, especially the physical properties of raw materials and mainly plant products. In recent years, together with her team, she has been conducting research on the use of unconventional, innovative techniques as preliminary treatments and supporting heat and mass transfer processes. She is the author of several dozen scientific publications and managed or carried out several research projects. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustration made during her speech.

Since 2009, Kerstin Pasch is heading the DIL Office Brussels and leading the DIL Platform Networks. She is responsible for European and international fundraising administration of public funded EU projects as well as European and international network building. Pasch and her team sets up and runs the DIL Innovation Hub in Quakenbrück and coordinates DIL activities as partner in the EIT Food. She is member of the European FOOD force research network. Her background is in agricultural biology (University of Hohenheim) and plant protection (University of Bonn). From 2006-2009 she headed the EU liaison office in Brussels of GFP/German plant breeders and FEI/German food industry. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustration made during her speech.

Leonor Pascual is a chemical engineer (Polytechnical University of Valencia), specialized in industrial processes with a master’s degree on plastic materials transformation processes. She has one year of experience in the Compounding Department of a Polymeric Research Centre, taking part in national and international research projects. She has two years of experience in the Quality Department of an Automotive Company, carrying out the subcontracted projects homologation. Since 2007, she has been working in the Packaging Technologies Department of AINIA, taking part and leading research projects related to sustainable packaging. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustrations made during her speech (video and illustration) and during the panel discussion (video and illustration) she attended.

Fabien Santini is Deputy Head of Unit ‘governance of the agri food markets’ in DG AGRI. Agronomist and political scientist by training, he has been working in several DGs of the European Commission for over 20 years, including in several posts related to agricultural markets. Look at the video and the live illustration made during the panel discussion he attended.

Martijntje Vollebregt‘s passion in work is to increase the sustainability of food chains. I work as a researcher and project leader in the group Food Technology at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research. Building a team and working jointly towards a common goal is essential to increase sustainability. In her projects, she focuses on resource use efficiency and works on new processing technologies for the food industry, product-based process control with new sensor solutions, data analyses and integration into decision support, alternative sources for ingredients and sustainability assessment. These themes are closely related to reduction of food loss and waste, essential for lowering the climate impact of the food chain. Read the presentation and look at the video.

Liesbet Vranken is Full Professor in Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at the KU Leuven University. In her research, Vranken integrates different quantitative methods from various disciplines to study human- environment interactions. She is a specialist in studying the behavior of food consumers and land users and in analyzing potential behavioral adjustments to improve welfare and realize economic growth. She has a general interest in the production, consumption and marketing of bio-based goods and services. However, her research mainly focuses on food consumers and land users. Read the presentation and look at the video and the live illustration made during her speech.

Milena Zdravkovic is a project specialist at New Platform Technologies of Gelita AG. Previously, she worked as research associate at DIL e.V. in the Advanced Technologies Department. Within the FOX project, she was managing design, building and testing of the mobile fruit and vegetable processing unit (FOX-unit). Furthermore, she worked on other scientific and commercial projects, dealing with application of novel food processing technologies such as pulsed electric fields (PEF), high pressure pasteurisation (HPP), ultra-high pressure homogenisation (UHPH) etc. From 2017-2019 she was research associate at Agricultural Faculty, University of Belgrade in the department for Food Fermentation and Preservation. Look at the video and the live illustration made during the panel discussion she attended.