Ana Sanches-Silva obtained the degree in Pharmacy by the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and in 2005 received her European Ph.D. in Pharmacy from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Afterwards she started a one year post-doc contract at USC. In July 2006 she initiates a FCT post-doc at USC and in July 2007 she joins the Department of Food and Nutrition of the National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA) with the same grant. From May 2008 to April 2013 she has been researcher at INSA under the frame of FCT Program Science 2007. From July 2013 she is an invited researcher at INSA.

Ana Sanches-Silva has a remarkable track record and her research interests are focused on the evaluation of safety and composition of food and food packaging. Moreover, her special interest is the development of active packaging, study of food-packaging interactions, especially the migration from packaging to food, and development of analytical methodologies for the analysis of food contaminants and components

Mingruo Guo is a food chemist and inventor, specializes in the areas of functional foods, whey based environmentally safe products, prebiotics and probiotics, infant formula, herbs and nutritional food development. His ongoing research projects include whey protein-based, environmentally safe adhesive and glue products; milk, soy and oat-based symbiotic foods; soy-based coffee creamer; application of limited proteolysis of milk proteins in infant formula; and functional goat-milk yogurt kefir. He is author of the textbook \\\"Functional Foods- Principles and Technology\\\", published in 2007. He serves as a consultant to both trouble shoot and help food manufacturers develop new products. He has a patent on spray drying technology and two others pending on functional foods and whey protein based wood finishes. The environmentally safe wood finish was awarded as one of the top 10 Green Products in the US.

Mingruo Guo’s research areas includes: Environmentally safe products from whey; component interactions in infant formula and nutritional products; the chemistry and technology of fermented dairy products; ultrasound treatment of milk and apple cider; pre- and probiotics; functional properties of food proteins such as whey proteins.

Ramprakash Pandian currently leads the quality assurance team at Sofina Foods based in Edmonton, Canada and has a combination of industry and research experience in food safety and animal health. As as a Manager, Quality Assurance and Food Safety at Sofina, he oversees the entire quality assurance and food safety programs including regulatory compliance. He works closely with research and development team in new product development initiatives and implementation of the research projects across the facility. Previously, he has held positions in the past as Food Safety Systems Specialist including key roles in Food Safety and Quality Assurance within the meat, poultry and livestock industry. Ramprakash holds a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree and a Masters in Veterinary Biotechnology (MVSc) from India. He is currently a Member of Scientific Expert Panel in Food Safety and Microbiology and a professional member of Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology

Ramprakash Pandian's research interests includes:Food Safety, Risk assessments, Epidemiology and Public health, Meat processing and Quality Assurance

Andras Koris is an Associate professor of Food Science, Corvinus University of Budapest. He holds a Doctorate degree from Corvinus University of Budapest,2008. He has held positions at Gent University, University of Wroclaw, University of Novi Sad and University of Calabria.

Andras Koris\'s research area includes:Refining of crude oil membrane filtration plant, energy-efficient membrane cleaning oily waste water, gas injection and mixing Effect of Static membrane, energy-efficient and gentle drying of food and food production processes, computer modeling, CFD.

Dr. Shuntang Guo is a professor at College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University in Beijing, China. His research is focused on plant protein processing and utilization, especially soybean and cereals. Within the context of food chemistry and hydrocolloids, his research deals with food (soybean and cereals) processing techniques, hydro colloidal properties of emulsions, isolation, nutrition and functional properties of plant protein and peptides, food flavor identification, etc. He is a member of Chinese Association of Agricultural Science Societies and an editorial board member of several academic journals.

Shuntang Guo’s research area includes: new theory and techniques in plant protein processing, isolation and application of active peptides, soybean and cereals processing techniques and soybean products flavor identification.

Cornelia Witthoft is professor in food science at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden. Her research is focussed on water-soluble vitamins, in particular folate. Within the context of food and nutritional sciences, her research deals with food composition, studies on nutrient retention, sensory and technological properties during food processing with the final aim to enhance the nutritional quality of food. Studies on nutrient absorption, metabolism and bioactivity and the evaluation of suitable status parameters have the aim to understand diet-health associations. She is member of the national expert panel for Nutrition and Public Health at the Swedish National Food Agency. Under the frame of the Nordic Council of Ministers, she was appointed as member and chairperson of the “Folate Expert Group” for the 5th revision of the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations. She is member of the editorial board of the journal of Food Chemistry and AIMS Agriculture and Food. By participation in several EC Framework research projects and the network of excellence EuroFIR she established a national and international network within academia and stakeholders

Cornelia Witthoft\'s research areas includes Food science, human nutrition, folate, food processing, food functionality, nutrient bioavailability

John Tsaknis has completed his Ph.D. and Postdoctoral studies from Lincolnshire University, School of Food Sciences and is a chartered chemist from the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK. He is full professor in the School of Food Technology and Nutrition in Athens Greece. He is a member of the Standing Committee "Residues and Chemical Contaminants" in the International Dairy Federation (IDF) and Reviewer of 7 international scientific journals. He has published more than 40 papers in reputed journals and participated in more than 30 international conferences and has been serving as an editorial board member of repute.

John Tsaknis's research interest includes: Food Technology,Nanotechnology,Food Safety, Food Chemistry and Nutrition

Dr. Wimalawansa, MD, PhD, MBA, DSc, Professor of Medicine, former Chief of Endocrinology, Metabolism & Nutrition; expert in endocrinology, osteoporosis, metabolic bone disease, vitamin D and nutrition. He is an educator, author, researcher, innovator, executive board member, an administrator, and philanthropist. Research interests include osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and nutrition (micronutrients and vitamin D). He has made seminal contributions to medicine, including new modes of treating osteoporosis. In 1984, he pioneered intra-operative hormone assays to assist endocrine surgical procedures. He received multiple recognitions from professional societies, including Dr. Boy Frame Award, American Endocrine Society Glen Foundation Awards, and innovation award from Asian Chamber of Commerce. He received a coveted Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to science and humanity and Dr. Oscar Gluck Humanitarian Award. He served on national and international scientific review committees, including the NIH, VA, DEA, and NASA.

Sunil Wimalawansa's research interests include: osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and nutrition (micronutrients and vitamin D)

Dr. Xu is a professor in Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC), Associate Director of UIC Key Lab -Laboratory for Health Promotion Mechanism of Medicinal Food and Folk Remedy, author of over 90 peer-reviewed papers. Dr. Xu received Ph.D in Chungnam National University, South Korea. He conducted postdoctoral research work in North Dakota State University, Purdue University, and Gerald P. Murphy Cancer Foundation during 2005-2009. Dr. Xu is serving as Associate Editor-in-Chief of Food Science and Human Wellness, an Editorial Board member of several international journals.

John Tsaknis's research interest includes: The overall goal of his research is to understand health promoting effects of phytochemicals. Specific interests include: 1) health benefits (targeted at aging, cancers, obesity, and diabetes) assessment of phytochemicals from legumes, fruits, vegetables, traditional Chinese medicines; 2) cellular and molecular mechanisms of bioactive food components in disease prevention.

Afef Janen, female, originally from Tunisia, food chemist, graduated with Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, Biology, and Geology (1995) from University of Science Tunis, Tunisia/Niamey, Niger, then went to the USA on assistantship to seek graduate education at Alabama A&M University (AAMU) in 1998. She earned an M.S. (2002) and a Ph.D. (2009) in Food Chemistry. She worked at Encapsula NanoSciences in Nashville, TN, formulating liposomes, mainly clodronate liposomes, to be distributed to universities and research labs, and constructing a clodronate liposome database for cancer researchers in 2010. From 2011 to 2012, she taught biological sciences at AAMU and conducted research in cytotoxicity. She went on to perform other research in the areas of biochemistry and biophysics. Dr. Janen currently is active in the following capacities: editor for the Phi Tau Sigma Honorary Society Newsletter (2013 to present), abstracts committee member for STEM Day (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) at AAMU, Normal, AL (April 2012 to present), editorial board member of Journal of Food Research, reviewer for Journal of Nanoparticle Research and Journal of Food Science, and a member of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) (1999 to present). She presently is a research scientist at AAMU.

My prior research work in my masters’ program focused on Food Chemistry, where I developed a method to retard the lipid oxidation process, a major cause of deterioration in the quality of meat and in particular, ground meats. Lipid oxidation affects the quality of meats and limits their shelf-life. Changes caused by lipid oxidation include loss of flavor, nutrient value, functionally and color, and development of off-flavors, and the accumulation of compounds such as malonaldehydes and several cholesterol oxidation products which may be harmful to the health of consumers. Antioxidants are often added to meat products to prevent lipid oxidation or decomposition and the development of off-flavors. However, the conventional methods of the antioxidants application do not target cell membranes, but rather is only distributed throughout cells of the meat. Therefore, using liposomes (capsules) containing antioxidants could exhibit specificity to the cell membranes and spontaneously release the Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA). From my thesis work, my findings have shown that how encapsulating BHA using a phospholipid capsule could increase antioxidant effectiveness, and eventually how to increase the expected shelf-life of ground turkey meat compare to the unencapsulated BHA and the control. Additional questions that were raised from thesis research were, “How to maximize the efficiency of the liposomal BHA and to elucidate the mechanisms of incorporation and release of BHA from the capsules?” As a Ph.D. student, my research work continued along this direction where the primary objectives on manipulating the method of incorporating the liposomal BHA in ground turkey meat in order to maximize the efficiency of BHA performance and using technologies such as Raman Spectroscopy (RS) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) to study the interaction of the antioxidant BHA and the membrane bilayer in meat products were accomplished. In my current research and post-doctoral studies, I focus on the structural and antimicrobial properties of metal oxide nanomaterials such as Lanthanum (La) and Neodymium (Nd) and new organometallic compounds of dialkyl and alkylene dithiophosphates, which are designed to exhibit strong bioactivity effect. Due to my experiences in my doctoral and currently post-doctoral research, I seek to embrace an interdisciplinary approach, which bridges food chemistry, biophysics and microbiology in extending my future research to provide new information addressing novel techniques to improve food safety through (1) biochemical and (2) biophysical techniques. With regards to the biochemical methods, I intend to evaluate the anti-radicalar activities of the antioxidant BHA, as well as formulate kinetic models of reactions; also study the antimicrobial activity of different nanoparticles by using the Bioscreen C and investigate their mechanisms of action. Regarding biophysical methods, I intend to continue working in the area of the incorporation of BHA into the membrane bilayer by using staining methods such as radiolabeling BHA in order to locate the antioxidant within the bilayer. Thus, my future research will lead to more usage of liposomes in nutrition and food science.

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