ESR1: Rhea Chhaya
Thesis: Development of a Feed Chain Risk Assessment to assess the increased risk from hazards in animal feed as a result of climate change and potential transfer to dairy produce for human consumption
Host: University College Dublin
Contributors: ONIRIS, Crème Global
Rhea Chhaya graduated with a Master of Engineering Sciences in Food Engineering from University College Dublin in 2019. Her thesis was on thermal resistance of Cronobacter sakazakii specifically focusing on powdered infant formula. She also completed an integrated Masters of Business Administration and Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, India in 2018. Since September 2019, Rhea is a PhD student at University College Dublin and is working on developing a feed chain risk assessment to assess the increased risk from mycotoxins due to climate change and potential human exposure to the substance through dairy.
ESR Podcast: https://youtu.be/i7E01D3gn5g
ESR2: Styliani Roufou
Title of the Thesis: Modelling the dynamics of microbial change: dairy food production processes and process/waste water of dairy food
Host: University of Malta
Contributors: KUL, Feiraco
Styliani Roufou graduated with Master of Science degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki at the Department of Food Sciences and Technology (Greece) in April 2018. Her diploma thesis, supervised by Prof. Athanasia Goula, was ‘Application in food industries of two food industry wastes, grape pomace and pomegranate peels – Extraction of their phenolic compounds and incorporation into foods’. During this time she did her Erasmus plus in Malta and she worked on a project which explored how a particular food fungus acts while being continuously exposed to nanoparticles, and she modelled its adaptation capacity, under the supervision of Prof Vasilis Valdramidis. Since October 2019 is a PhD student at the Department of Food Sciences and Nutrition, University of Malta (Malta). She is part of an ITN project PROTECT as an Early Stage Researcher where her research focuses on climate change and the development of appropriate microbial modelling tools.
ESR Podcast: https://youtu.be/1uhogw8fJ6U
ESR 3: Lydia Katsini
Title of the Thesis: Modelling the dynamics of microbial change: dairy food products
Host: KU Leuven
Contributors: FAO, UM
Lydia holds an Integrated Master’s Degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition from the Agricultural University of Athens. During her thesis she developed a user-friendly computational tool for the design of thermal processes of canned foods. Since January 2020 she has been pursuing her Ph.D. at BioTeC+ – Chemical and Bioprocess Technology and Control, Department of Chemical Engineering, KU Leuven. Her doctoral research focuses on modelling the microbial dynamics of dairy food products in the context of climate change in the frame of the PROTECT project under the Marie Skłodowska Curie – Innovative Training Networks.
ESR Podcast: https://youtu.be/sPxBH2jHwck
ESR4: Rodney Feliciano
Title of the Thesis: Develop a Quantitative Microbial Exposure Assessment (QMEA) model to assess the impact of key process steps on both risk for human health and commercial sterility failure rate
Host: École Nationale Vétérinaire, Agroalimentaire et de l’Alimentation de Nantes-Atlantique (Oniris)
Contributors: Danone and University of Santiago de Compostela
Rodney Feliciano is food scientist from the Philippines with an undergraduate and master’s degree in the field of food science and technology from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila and Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Hygiene-University of the Philippines-Diliman. His previous research works were in the field of food safety and food processing. The former dealt with the food borne disease outbreaks in the Philippines while the latter were on the use of Ultraviolet-C irradiation in the inactivation of spoilage yeasts in fruit juices, done in collaboration with the Graduate School of Biosphere Science, Hiroshima University, Japan. The outputs of these research works were published in internationally peer reviewed journals. He is currently affiliated with Sécurité des Aliments et Microbiologie, École Nationale Vétérinaire, Agroalimentaire et de l’Alimentation de Nantes-Atlantique (Secalim, Oniris). He is working on the development of a Quantitative Microbial Exposure Assessment (QMEA) model to assess the impact of key process steps on both risk for human health and commercial sterility failure rate as an ESR of the ITN-PROTECT Project under the Marie Skłodowska Curie -International Training Networks.
ESR Podcast: https://youtu.be/YRl0jgVYN4c
ESR5: Ourania Misiou
Title of the Thesis: Predictive modelling tools to evaluate the effects of climate change on food safety and spoilage-focus on thermophilic and mesophilic spore-forming bacteria in non-refrigerated food products
Host university: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Contributors: ONIRIS, Nestle
Ourania Misiou received her integrated MSc in Agriculture with specialization in Food Science and Technology from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2015. She also received her MSc in Applied Food Safety at Wageningen University in 2019. Since October 2019, is a PhD student in Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Hygiene, Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her research is mainly focus on the development of predictive modelling tools for the evaluation of the effects of climate change on thermophilic and mesophilic spore-forming bacteria in non-refrigerated food products in the frame of PROTECT ITN project.
ESR Podcast: https://youtu.be/A1wGFcM5nV8
ESR6: Maria Ioanna Mallliaroudaki
Title of the Thesis: Simulation and evaluation of energy use in the dairy industry: effect of a climate change scenario on the supply chain
Host: University of Nottingham
Contributors: KUL, NIZO
Maria Ioanna Malliaroudaki is a Chemical Engineer working at the University of Nottingham,UK, as an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) of the International Training Network (ITN) of PROTECT whilst pursuing a PhD in the Food, Water, Waste Research Group in the faculty of Engineering since October 2019. She is developing a model that simulates and evaluates the energy use in the dairy supply chain. She entered the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Patras, Greece in 2014 and graduated on July 2019 with a Master of Engineering (MEng) diploma. Regarding here experience in research, she did her thesis project in the laboratory of Fluid Mechanics of her department during 2018-2019 where she gained Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and coding experience. Her thesis was on Modelling and Simulation of red blood cell and platelet flow in microvessels. During the summer of 2018 she spent a month as a visiting researcher in the department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London (UCL) in the laboratory of fluid mechanics where she gained experience on the rheological properties of granular particles in toothpaste and rheology of flowing blood in microchannels. Modelling and Simulation, Industrial Design and Biochemical Engineering, Process Control, Optimization and Computational Fluid Dynamics are her specific areas of interest.
ESR Podcast: https://youtu.be/lFjd1FbFQ08
ESR 7: Paola Guzmán Luna
Title of the thesis: Improving the environmental sustainability of the dairy products value chains by the combined use of LCA and RA methodologies
Host: University of Santiago de Compostela
Contributors: University College Dublin (UCD) and Arla Foods
Paola Luna completed a degree in Biology (Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2015) in her home country, Mexico. She focused on climate change vulnerability and the evaluation and evolution of the Urban Heat Island effect in cities. During her bachelor, she also gained professional expertise in food systems, especially aquatic systems, due to her work experience in the agricultural and fisheries department at a national governmental body. Later, she obtained a master’s degree in Energy and Environmental Sciences in the Netherlands (University of Groningen, 2019). She addressed the environmental impact of aquaculture in terms of water, energy, and land footprint. Given her interests in climate change and environmental impact and sustainability of food systems, currently, she is Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher and pursuing a PhD at the University of Santiago in Spain within the PROTECT network. She is focusing on improving the environmental sustainability of the dairy products value chains by the combined use of Life Cycle Assessment and Risk Assessment methodologies. The activities are dedicated to define, develop, and validate an integrated method in a real case study, presuming to support the dairy sector in adapting to climate change effects with sustainable practices while addressing the contribution to global warming. This project will give her the opportunity to collaborate with other researchers and industrial partners within the network.
ESR Podcast: https://youtu.be/rwMLMpaO0ao
ESR8: Gopaiah Talari
Title of thesis: White Paper and Decision Support System on the influence of climate change on food safety
Host: Creme Global
Registered at: University College of Dublin
Contributors: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Gopiah Talari received his M.S. in July 2017 from the Department of Pharmacoinformatics, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), India. His master project was titled “Prediction of Total Clearance by Machine Learning Techniques”. The project involved the development of machine learning models to predict the human body total clearance as well as developing a web server for the validated model. He has scientific coding experience in programming languages such as C++, Python and R. After his masters he worked at the University of York, UK, as a Marie Curie data science researcher in the interdisciplinary research group BioArCh. Since 2020 January he has been pursuing a PhD at the University College Dublin, Ireland, as a part of the PROTECT project. His research work carried out at Creme Global software company, Dublin, is focused on the implementation of data-driven predictive scientific approaches in food safety to reveal patterns and build risk assessment models. His work will conclude in the development of a multi-objective user-friendly Decision Support System (DSS) which will integrate the predictive modelling and risk assessment tools developed as a part of PROTECT by other ESR’s.
ESR Podcast: https://youtu.be/InJJDz6JkeA