Jorge Barros Velázquez, Editor-in-chief
University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Since 2007, Jorge Barros Velázquez has been a professor of food technology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Department of Analytical Chemistry, Nutrition and Food Science. Jorge obtained his PhD in food microbiology in 1992. His post-doc experience includes the National Food Biotechnology Centre (Cork, Ireland) and the Institute for Marine Research (Vigo, Spain).
Since 1992, Jorge has been involved in the direction of more than 30 scientific projects on food microbiology, food technology and food safety – and has participated in another 15 projects. International collaborations in the last 20 years have included universities and research institutes in the United States, Italy, Argentina, Mexico and Chile. Jorge has also directed international cooperation projects with Mediterranean countries to improve biopreservation strategies in dairy and seafood products.
Jorge’s research interests include the development of novel preservation tools for seafood and other animal foods, such as the use of lactic acid bacteria and their bacteriocins, natural organic acids, essential oils, algae extracts or seafood wastes, as well as active food packaging strategies. Jorge has been involved in the development of omics strategies for application in the food sector, including the development of DNA chips and other miniaturized solutions for assessing food quality, authenticity and safety. In the last 12 years, Jorge has served as editor, associate editor and editorial board member of several international journals in the field of food science and technology. He has also edited the books Foodomics and Antimicrobial Food Packaging.
Rekha S. Singhal, Associate Editor
Institute of Chemical Technology, India
Professor Singhal is a full professor at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. She received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in Food Technology in 1984, 1986, and 1990, respectively. She has more than 30 years of experience in teaching and research in broad areas of food science and technology (carbohydrate chemistry and technology, microencapsulation, food product development), bioprocess technology (fermentation and downstream processing of enzymes, polysaccharides, therapeutic compounds and nutraceuticals), Indian traditional foods, and supercritical carbon dioxide extraction of biomolecules of food and nutraceutical interest.
Rekha has supervised more than 42 doctoral and 100 master’s students, and serves on several committees of national interest in India, while also evaluating projects for other international agencies. She has handled sponsored projects from the government and industry and collaborated with scientists both within and beyond the country.
She is the recipient of several honors and awards - recently fellowships from the Indian National Science Academy (2022) and the International Bioprocessing Association (2017-2018). She has worked as an Associate editor with the Journal of Food Science and Technology (2012 to 2015) and more recently with Carbohydrate Polymers (2020 to 2022). Prof. Singhal has co-authored a book, Handbook of Food Quality and Authenticity, published by Elsevier, and several book chapters. She has more than 400 publications and 14000+ citations on Scopus.
Qin Wang, Associate Editor
University of Maryland, USA
Dr. Qin Wang is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Maryland (UMD). Dr. Wang joined the UMD in 2008 after she completed a 3-year post-doctoral study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she got her Ph.D. degree in Food Science in 2004.
Her key research efforts have been applied in three directions: food nanotechnology, food protein modification, and safety and quality improvement of food products. Specifically, Dr. Wang’s research group uses food chemistry, food biophysics, material science and nanotechnology approaches to investigate structure-function relationships of food proteins and polysaccharides with the ultimate goal of improving food safety and quality. Various nanostructures, including nanoparticles, nanoemulsions and nanolaminates have been made with applications including nutraceutical encapsulation and targeted delivery, antimicrobial packaging materials, food pathogen detection, and edible coatings. Dr. Wang has published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal papers and edited one book titled: Nanotechnology Research Methods for Foods and Bioproducts.
Paula Bourke, Editorial Board Member
University College Dublin, Ireland
Paula Bourke is a Professor in the UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering, a Conway Institute Research Fellow, and a member of the UCD Institute of Food and Health. She graduated from the University of Limerick in 2001 with a PhD in microbiological safety of novel non-thermal processing technologies. During her time as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Limerick and as an Arnold Graves Research Fellow at DIT, she researched both thermal and non-thermal processing and their interactions with food-borne pathogens and resistance mechanisms.
Her research is primarily in the areas of sustainable processing innovations and novel antimicrobial technologies. She has a strong interest and research in bio-medically relevant issues including infection prevention and control and biofilms. She collaborates widely and has been successful in gaining funding awards at national and international levels. Her research group works on a range of cold plasma bioscience and sustainable food processing projects. Current research is supported through SFI Investigator, SFI-UKRI/BBSRC and SFI US-Ireland Tripartite awards, Department of Agriculture Food and Marine FIRM, Irish Research Council, the Royal Irish Academy as well as Enterprise Ireland awards. She was designated as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Web of Science based on her rankings within the top 1% of highly cited researchers. She is a member of the recently initiated EU COST network in Plasma Applications for smart and sustainable agriculture and the COST network in device-associated infection iPROMEDAI.
Benu Adhikari, Associate Editor
RMIT University, Australia
Professor Adhikari’s education and professional career have always centred around various aspects of Food. He obtained his bachelor's (Jiangnan University, China) and master's (AIT, Thailand) degrees in Food Engineering and PhD in Chemical Engineering with a Food Engineering focus (UQ, Australia). He worked briefly as a Research Engineer at Ecoles Des Mines (Albi, France) and as a Visiting Lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic (Singapore). He was the recipient of the Australian Research Council’s prestigious fellowships. He has taught and researched at multiple universities in Australia. Currently, he is working as a research-teaching professor at RMIT University. His research has a strong focus on material science, engineering and processing aspects of food including food proteins, food packaging, food powders and new food ingredients. His publications cover ‘process-composition-structure-function’ aspects of food. (To date) he has published 373 refereed journal papers and 15 book chapters. His publications have attracted >19,000 citations (Google Scholar) and his current H-index is 78. Professor Adhikari also serves on the Editorial Boards of multiple journals of the Food Science/Eng discipline. Prof Adhikari has a strong track record in supervising and mentoring PhD scholars and postdoctoral fellows.
