Keynote Speakers

Food Safety: occurrence, migration and mitigation of chemical and biological contaminants in foods, exposure/risk assessment, health aspects of food consumption, food legislation

Benedikt Cramer is a senior scientist at the Institute of Food Chemistry at the University of Münster, Germany. He earned a degree in Food Chemistry and obtained his PhD in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Hans-Ulrich Humpf. Since 2012, he is head of the service unit for instrumental analysis and mass spectrometry at the institute. His research focuses on the detection, mitigation, toxicity, and human biomonitoring of food contaminants. He has co-supervised publicly- and industry-funded projects investigating the impact of food processing on the formation of furans, acrylamide, and MCPD/GE, as well as the degradation of mycotoxins such as T-2 toxin and citrinin.

Formation of Furans During Breakfast Cereal Manufacturing
Furan and its alkylated derivatives are possibly carcinogenic process contaminants formed during thermal food processing, such as roasting, baking, extrusion cooking, and toasting. They can be generated from a wide range of precursors and detected in various foods, including breakfast cereals. Raw materials, moisture content, and process conditions—such as temperature and mechanical energy—affect the formation of furans. Through laboratory experiments, commercial samples, and on-site sampling at manufacturers, critical processing steps were identified, and process conditions with a high impact on furan formation were identified. A parallel determination of acrylamide formation enabled correlation analyses with furan and alkylfurans.

Food Production: sustainability and effectiveness of food production, detection of adulteration, traceability, future foods

Professor Chris Elliott, PhD, FRSC, FRSB, MRIA, OBE

Chris is the founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast and is a Honorary Professor there now. He is also Professor of Food Security at Thamassat University in Thailand. He has published around 600 peer-reviewed articles on the detection and control of agriculture, food, and environmental-related contaminants. Chris led the independent review of Britain’s food system following the 2013 horsemeat scandal. He now acts as a scientific advisor for a range of United Nations Agencies, governments, and industries on a range of food security topics.

Prof. Urszula Gawlik (Gawlik-Dziki) is a Full Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Food Chemistry at the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Poland. She was awarded the title of Professor the discipline of Food Technology and Nutrition in 2018. Her scientific expertise focuses on bioactive phenolic compounds derived from edible plants, their nutritional and nutraceutical potential, and their interactions with other bioactive components and the food matrix. Prof. Gawlik has led or contributed to 20 research projects funded by various entities, including industry. She is a co-author of three patents and 154 research papers, which have garnered 5,321 citations (h-index = 43, Scopus).

Prof. Ing. Lenka Kouřimská, Ph.D. is a senior lecturer at the Department of Microbiology, Nutrition and Dietetics, and a vice-dean for international relations of the Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague. She obtained her master and PhD diplomas from food chemistry and analysis at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague. Her research activities are focussed on food chemistry and analysis, nutritional and sensory quality of food with a focus on the nutritional value of edible insects, sensory analysis of food, food commodity science, food quality and safety, lipid oxidation, and natural antioxidants. She is the author or co-author of 78 publications with IF (citation index according to the WOS is 1177, h-index 20).

She is an editorial board member of NFS Journal and Journal of Food Research. She a member of International Measurement Confederation, the Czech Chemical Society, and the Czech Society for Nutrition. Within the European large research infrastructure METROFOOD-RI she is the coordinator of the Czech national node.