Jacob de Boer is Professor emeritus at the Vrije University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has a PhD in analytical chemistry. Prof. de Boer has worked for 50 years on persistent environmental contaminants. In 1998 he won the Excellent Scientist Award of the Wageningen University. He has (co)coordinated many European research projects and many research projects for other international organizations. He organized numerous international interlaboratory studies on contaminants. He is a regular reviewer of scientific projects and programs in various countries. He was recently appointed by the Dutch minister for the environment on an expert board on health issues in the Amsterdam harbor area. He is an advisor for the Flemish government on the epidemiological study on PFAS in humans in Antwerp. He is weekly interviewed on PFAS issues on radio, TV and in newspapers in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. He has published more than 250 peer reviewed articles among which one paper in Nature and one in Science, two books and 22 book chapters. He is editor-in-chief of Chemosphere (Impact factor 8.1) and member of the editorial board of the Handbook of Environmental Chemistry.
Milena Stranska is a full professor for food chemistry and analysis at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. Her research is focused on biologically active substances of natural origin, including mycotoxins and their modified forms. She has led several interdisciplinary research projects investigating the fate of mycotoxins during food processing, their (bio)transformations, toxicity and bioavailability assessment, and the evaluation of the push-and-pull effect in cocktails with positively acting bioactive substances. Her most recent research demonstrates the application of progressive food processing technologies to minimise the development of micromycetes during malting, and characterises their impact on the quality of malt at the metabolomic and multiomic level. In addition, she has been involved in the bioprospecting of natural resources and the characterisation of their chemical composition through the utilisation of advanced high-resolution MS techniques, followed by the assessment of the end-point effects at different levels of biological models. At the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague, she is responsible for the Food Chemistry and Technology Bachelor's programme and the Biotechnology and Food Science Master's degree study programme. Prof. Stranska is (co)author of more than 70 SCI publications (WoS H index: 32; >3.500 citations), and has been the principal investigator of 11 (inter)national research projects.
Dr. Laura Righetti is Assistant Professor in Analytical Chemistry at Wageningen University and
Research. She joined the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry and Wageningen Food Safety Research in
2022 as recipient of the WGS Talent Programme.
She holds a MSc degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology from Modena and Reggio Emilia
University (IT), a PhD degree in Food Chemistry from University of Parma (IT) obtained in 2017,
and postdoctoral experience in Analytical Chemistry at the Justus Liebig University Giessen
(DE). Her research interest is focus on small molecules (both natural toxins and bioactive
metabolites) and on the development of mass spectrometry based methodologies to comprehensive
detect them.
From an analytical chemistry point of view, the comprehensive analysis of secondary metabolites
by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry remains a challenge because of their chemical
diversity, the large number of isomeric forms, and the lack of analytical standards. Therefore I
have a specific interest in adding innovative analytical techniques such as ion mobility mass
spectrometry and mass spectrometry imaging to the metabolomics workflow to overcome the
challenge of comprehensively characterize the “metabolome” in food and plants.
Dr. Laura Righetti is (co)author of more than 50 SCI publications. Since 2020 she is member of
the Scientific Advisory Committee of ILSI Europe.
Analytical Chemistry Degree, Summa Cum Laude, at University of Ferrara in 1997. National Prize
for Young Researchers promoted by the Italian Chemistry Federation in 1998. Master in Science,
Technology and Management from University of Ferrara, working at the " Natta Research Center" of
Shell-Montell
Polyolefins, in 1998. PhD in Science & Technology of Innovative Materials from University of
Parma in 2005.
Food Safety & Authenticity Research Manager in Barilla Spa company since 2003, working in an
international context with public\private research centres\organizations on research projects
about food safety-quality-authenticity, food contact materials, sensing and mass spectrometry
applications.
Adjunct Professor of AgriFood Authenticity at Catholic University Sacred Heart - Milan/Piacenza;
Visiting Professor at University of Chemistry and Technology – Prague.
Chair of the Italian National Normative Organization (UNI) Food Authenticity Working Group.
Member of: Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), working groups for
Biotoxins-Processing Contaminants-Food Authenticity in European Committee for Standardization
(CEN), ILSI Europe Scientific Advisory Committee (and Vice Chair of the Food Contaminants Task
Force), Italian Cluster Agrifood Scientific Board, European Food Safety Platform Steering
Committee.
Google Scholar H-index 32 & i10-index 69, Scopus H-index 28, Research Gate index 30. Scientific
production documented by 6 book chapters, 2 books edited, 180 contributions at national and
international conferences and 130 papers in international ISI journals.
Univ. Prof. Dipl. Ing. Dr. techn. Erich Leitner is the head of the Institute of Analytical
Chemistry and Food Chemistry at Graz University of Technology. He studied technical chemistry at
the Graz University of Technology, Austria where he obtained a PhD in organic trace analysis in
environmental matrices. He also earned a habilitation in “Food Chemistry” dealing with flavor
and off flavor compounds in food and other matrices. Currently he holds a professorship for
“Analytics of food and food contact material”, which deals mainly with the interaction of food
contact material and the packed good.
His research activities are focused on the identification and quantification of volatile, odor
active substances and more recently of toxicological concern in food and food contact materials.
He has over 35 years of experience in organic trace and ultra trace analysis mainly based on gas
chromatographic methods using several sample preparation techniques and analytical solutions
including multidimensional separation. Besides he is a trained sensory expert and member of the
expert panel of the TU Graz sensory lab.
Rudolf Krska is full professor for Analytical Chemistry at BOKU University in Vienna. He is head of the Institute of Bioanalytics and Agro-Metabolomics at BOKU´s Department of Agrobiotechnology IFA-Tulln. 2009/10 he served as A/Chief of Health Canada´s Food Research Division in Ottawa. Since 2017 he has also been Key Researcher at the Austrian Competence Centre for Feed and Food Quality, Safety and Innovation (FFoQSI). Rudolf Krska has received 12 scientific awards and is (co )author of more than 500 SCI publications which have been cited some 22.000 times (h index: 79, Scopus). Another most convincing evidence for the outstanding quality of Prof. Krska´s research work has been his ranking as top 1% highly cited researcher (Web of Science). In 2018, he has become jointly appointed Professor within the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen´s University, Belfast, UK. Prof. Rudolf Krska serves as President of the Austrian Society of Analytical Chemistry and has recently become Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy.
Professor Chris Elliott, PhD, FRSC, FRSB, MRIA, OBE 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 more than 580 peer review articles relating to 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.
Over the years Chris has developed a high level network of collaborators across Europe, the
United States, the Middle East and Asia. He is a recipient of a Winston Churchill Fellowship and
is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Royal Society of Biology. Chris has
received numerous prizes and awards for his work such as the Royal Society of Chemistry
Theophilus Redwood Prize and an OBE in 2017. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy
in 2020 and became Honorary President of the Society of Food Hygiene and Technology in 2023.
Dr. Vít Kosek is an assistant professor at the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, Faculty of Food and Biochemical Technology, Department of Food Analysis and Nutrition. He is an author and co-author of 17 papers in peer-reviewed international journals (cited 184 times, h-index 8), Researcher ID: AAD-3496-2021, ORCID: 0000-0003-2087-9596, Scopus ID: 57193280028. He obtained his education at UCT Prague in the fields of chemistry and food analysis and nutrition. In his research, Dr. Kosek focuses on development and application of metabolomic/lipidomic methods for food authentication or clinical research using mass spectrometry, and also development of analytical methods for food contaminants. He is lecturer of the Chemometry and Statistical data analysis courses at UCT Prague and leader of research projects dealing with metabolomic and lipidomic analysis in the scope of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases.
Prof. dr. Hans-Gerd Janssen obtained an MSc. (1987) and PhD degree (1991) in analytical chemistry from the Eindhoven University of Technology. He joined Unilever in 1999 as group-leader chromatography and mass spectrometry. He has been, or is, active as a board member in several national committees including the Section for Analytical Chemistry of the Royal Dutch Chemical Society. He also is active in several international scientific and organising committees for symposia and he is a member of the editorial board of several journals. In 2004 Hans-Gerd was appointed part-time professor Analytical Separations at the University of Amsterdam. In 2019 he moved to Wageningen University where he now holds a similar part-time position. His research focuses on the development of new chromatographic methods for the analysis of complex food-related samples. Prof. Janssen was awarded the 2019 GC×GC scientific achievement award for his work on comprehensive GC, and the 2023 AOCS Dutton award for his contributions in analytical chemistry applied to oils and fats. He has more than 220 publications in the area of chromatography, mass spectrometry and food analysis.
He graduated from Nantes University as a Doctor in Analytical Chemistry (PhD, 1995). Since 2005, he has been a Professor in food safety at the National Veterinary College of Nantes, Oniris. Professor Le Bizec is the Head of LABERCA, French National Reference Laboratory for growth promoters in farm animals and persistent organic pollutants and director of a Research Lab involving both Oniris & INRAE. He is co-leader of a national Research Infrastructure "France-Exposome" (human chemical exposome). He currently chairs the Contaminants (ERCA) panel of the French Food Safety Agency (Anses) (2018-2025). Professor Le Bizec is also a member of an FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) since 2008 and was a member of IARC (PCBs/PBBs, 2013). He is expert on the WADA Laboratory Expert Advisory Group (Lab EAG) since 2015 and became its Chairman since 2024. He also chairs the WADA WG on the revision of the international standard for laboratories (ISL). Bruno’s activities include membership in several scientific committees at international scientific events [VDRA (B), RAFA (CZ), Saskval (CA) + chair of 2022 & 2025 Euroresidue (NL) and Traces (B)]. He was also Chairman and organizer of the 2020 edition of the International Conference on POPs (DIOXIN2020) and Analytics 2022. He is teaching food safety, risk analysis, expology and analytical chemistry. He is coordinating the actions of SARAF, an international education school specialized in Residue Analysis in Food. Bruno is the Head Deputy of the Doctoral School ‘Biology and Health’ of the Nantes/Angers University (350 PhD students) since more than 12 years. He is the author or co-author of more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific articles (h-index 61). He received several awards amongst which the Euroresidue Award in 2004 for its research career on steroid hormones analysis. He was bestowed Knight of the Order of Academic Palms in 2015 by the French Government for distinguished services.
Christian W. Klampfl obtained his Ph.D. from University of Innsbruck/Austria in 1993. In 1992 he
moved to Johannes-Kepler University Linz as an assistant professor with a research focus mainly
set on separation science (chromatography, electrophoresis). In the late 90ies his research
shifted more and more towards hyphenation of separation techniques (mainly capillary
electrophoresis) and mass spectrometry. 1999-2000 he worked as a research associate at the
University of Hobart/Tasmania in the group of Prof. Paul Haddad. In 2001 he was promoted to
Associate Professor. Main research areas are (i) hyphenation of separation techniques to MS, and
(ii) ambient MS techniques like DART, DESI or direct spray MS, with the a quite wide focus of
application areas comprising: (i) clinical analysis and metabolomics, (ii) analysis of technical
products in particular focusing on problems related to plastics recycling, (iii) environmental
metabolomics analysis of technical products (polymers, synthetic oils, coating...), (iv)
analysis of food related products.
Prof. Klampfl has published more than 130 papers and several book chapters, and has an h-factor
of 38 (Google Scholar). He is serving as deputy editor for two journals, Electrophoresis (Wiley)
and Chemistry Monthly (Springer). Prof. Klampfl is currently head of the Institute of Analytical
and General Chemistry at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, head of the Department of
General Chemistry and vice-president of the Austrian Society of Analytical Chemistry (ASAC).
Dr. Carsten Fauhl-Hassek is a food chemist and works at the department for Safety in the Food Chain of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) in Germany. Since 2021 he is temporally assigned as co-head of the department, in addition to heading the unit Product identity, Supply chains and Traceability. He has special expertise in authentication of food and feed, wine analysis and appreciation, method development and validation (ring trials). Dr. Fauhl-Hassek is also head of the Senior Expert Office for the Import Control of Wine and designated expert for the European Wine Databank for stable isotopes. Since almost 20 years he is national delegate and expert in the sub-commission of analysis of the International Organization of Wine and Vine (OIV). Dr. Fauhl-Hassek is involved in national as well as international research projects and leading expert in non-targeted analysis employing different analytical techniques such as NMR spectroscopy. In addition, in the past he was involved in the risk assessment of mycotoxins and responsible for the National Reference Laboratory for Mycotoxins in Feed and Food.
Barbara Siegmund is a trained analytical chemist who moved into food chemistry with the start of
her PhD thesis. She achieved her PhD and later her ‘habilitation’ at Graz University of
Technology for the scientific field of food chemistry. At present, she is associate professor at
Graz University of Technology and deputy head of the Institute of Analytical Chemistry and Food
Chemistry. She is also head of the institute’s sensory science group.
Since her PhD, Barbara has been fascinated by the flavour of food with a special focus on the
formation of flavour of fruits, vegetables and plant-based food commodities, but also of food
contact materials. In her research activities together with the co-workers of her group, she
investigates the flavour and also off-flavour development during growth, ripening, processing
and storage of the products. To achieve this, gas chromatographic techniques including gas
chromatography olfactometry are applied on the one hand. On the other hand, sensory evaluation
with a focus on analytical sensory evaluation are applied to cover those sensory properties that
go beyond odour.
In addition to research on food flavour as an essential quality criterion of food, promoting
sensory science in food technology, quality assurance or product development is one of Barbara’s
great professional concerns. Therefore, she co-founded the Austrian Sensory Society SNÖ
(Sensorik Netzwerk Österreich, www.snoe.at) and she has been
the SNÖ president since 2013. She
is also Austrian delegate to the European Sensory Science Society E3S.
Bas van der Velden, PhD, is the head of the data science team at Wageningen Food Safety Research. He has over 10 years hands on experience in machine learning and deep learning, with a focus on eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). He holds a PhD in Medical Imaging from Utrecht University and an MSc in Medical Engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology, both from the Netherlands. Bas has a strong background in explainable AI (XAI), making complex AI systems more transparent and understandable, which is crucial in high stakes decision making such as food safety. Throughout his career, Bas has gained experience at several prestigious institutions. He has conducted research at UC Berkeley, CA, USA, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY, NY.
Marco Arlorio is Full Professor of Food Chemistry at Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences,
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale (Novara, IT). In the recent past, he served as
Chair of the Food Chemistry Inter-Divisional Group of Italian Chemical Society (GICA- SCI, Rome,
IT). To date, he serves as Past-Chair of the Division of Food Chemistry, EuCheMS (Bruxelles, B).
From December 2020 Marco works as member of the Scientific Advisory Committee within ILSI EU
(Bruxelles, B).
The main research interests are focused on food quality and food safety assessment, particularly
regarding the developing of new analytical methods and new strategic approaches dedicated to the
food characterization. Principal fields of interests are: food authenticity and analytical
traceability; detection of hidden ingredients in food (food allergens); bioactive compounds in
food/food ingredients (particularly antioxidant polyphenols and prebiotic oligosaccharides);
ingredient and food design (particularly focusing in the valorisation of food
by-products/wastes); thermal impact and neo-formed compounds in foods.
He teaches Food chemistry, Food biotechnology, Chemistry of functional foods and food
supplements. He was/is member and organizer of many international Congresses in Food Science
Area (e.g. EuroFoodChem series, CoCoTea series, Pigments in Food series, In vino Analytica
Scientia series, CRF Series). Marco Arlorio is Author or co-Author of more than 350 scientific
products (scientific papers published on Peer Reviewed Journals, Abstracts, Proceedings,
Academic Books and Chapters).
Angelo Maggiore is a marine environmental scientist. Since 2014 he has been working as Scientific Officer in the Knowledge, Innovation and Partnership Management Unit of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). He is coordinating EFSA’s environmental scanning and foresight projects related to food and feed safety vulnerabilities in the circular and blue economy and climate change. He has coordinated the session on "Safeguarding our future: creating a framework for sustainability assessments" of the EFSA Conference 2022 and supported the EFSA Scientific Committee in the development of the Guidance to develop specific protection goals for environmental risk assessment at EFSA, in relation to biodiversity and ecosystem services. In the past he has worked at the European Chemicals Agency in Helsinki in the field of environmental hazard classification. At the Italian Environmental Protection Agency, he has worked as environmental damage assessor, providing technical support to the Ministry of the Environment. At the beginning of his career, he worked as oceanographer at the Imperial College in London and at the National Research centre in Bologna, modelling the ocean circulation under different meteorological forcing conditions and simulating plankton patchiness.
Joris Van Loco graduated as Engineer in Chemistry and Agricultural Industries, postgraduate in Quality Assurance. Scientific Director of the Chemical and Physical Health Risks department in SCIENSANO (Belgium). He is involved in (dietary) exposure assessment and lab analysis of contaminants and additives in food, consumer goods, human samples,... with the aim to perform risk and health impact evaluation of chemicals. He is author of more than 100 scientific papers in this field. Member of the Superior Health Council workgroup Nutrition, Member of the administrative board of Nubel, Chair of TC23 Metrology in food and nutrition of IMEKO. Invited lecturer at KULeuven and ULiege universities.
Marja Lamoree is a professor of Analytical Chemistry for Environment and Health. She is an expert in the field of Effect-Directed Analysis (EDA), in which in vitro effect-based testing, chromatographic fractionation and high resolution mass spectrometry are used to identify Chemicals of Emerging Concern. To understand the relationship between the chemical exposome and the living environment, her research focuses on both human and environmental exposure assessment. For novel classes of compounds she develops high throughput analytical methods for quantitative analysis, including plastic additives and micro/nanoplastics in environmental as well as human samples such as blood, breastmilk, amniotic fluid and placenta tissues. She currently supervises >10 PhD students, funded by national and international funding organizations. In addition, she collaborates with 4 postdocs working on micro/nanoplastics analytical method development and application, EDA including suspect and nontarget screening and in vitro assay development for use in EDA focusing on specific classes of pharmaceuticals. To unravel the identity of chemical risk drivers in complex real-life mixtures, she works on the implementation of EDA on samples from the environment-food-human continuum, for final application in human cohort samples.
Eystein Oveland, PhD, is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway (www.hi.no). He possesses extensive expertise in analytical methods from working in multiple scientific disciplines, including biotechnology, oncology, and multiple sclerosis. Over the past eight years, Eystein has focused on food science, where he has been instrumental in streamlining and standardizing methodologies and procedures for reporting analytical data to regulatory authorities. Eystein serves as the Executive Director of the Nordic-Baltic Committee on Food Analysis (www.nmkl.org), and contributes as a Board member for NordVal International, MicroVal, and AOAC Europe. He is currently leading a project that advances vitamin analysis and mass spectrometry technology, and he participates in method development in AOAC International and ISO WG 14 for vitamins, carotenoids, and other nutrients. Eystein has, in addition to reports and standards, co(authored) 36 SCI publications.
Chiara Dall’Asta is Full Professor of Food Chemistry at the Department of Food and Drug,
University of Parma. She hold a MSc degree in Chemistry and a PhD in Food Science.
She has published >250 peer reviewed articles mainly in the field of food safety and has been
involved in policy making as expert members of several working groups of the European Food
Safety Authority, co-authoring 8 scientific assessments.
Her primary field of research is related to mycotoxins and natural bioactive compounds, with a
focus on the formation, stability, and biotransformation of mycotoxins, and on the chemical
mechanisms underlying their toxicological activity. Recently, she’s moved towards the
application of HR-MS metabolomics/system biology to the field and has implemented the use of
computational toxicology and alternative methods to the investigation of molecular mechanisms
responsible for the biological activities of (multiple) chemicals.
Over time, Chiara has enlarged her scientific interest in the field of food fraud, through the
application of advanced non-targeted methodologies (i.e. i.e. imaging-MS, ion mobility MS,
ambient MS) to food fingerprinting and markers identification. Currently she is mainly involved
in the safety assessment of novel foods from plant origin and in the authentication of herbal
supplements and botanicals.
Chiara is Rector’s Delegate for the Doctoral Program at the University of Parma, and proudly
committed to mentoring the next generation of food scientists.
Frans Verstraete graduated in 1985 as agricultural engineer at the University of Ghent (Belgium). After his studies he held positions at the University of Ghent and thereafter at the Belgian Ministry of Agriculture and he was for a period technical adviser of the Belgian Minister of Agriculture. He is working for the European Commission since 1997. In the European Commission he has had various functions and since 2000 he is working at the Directorate General Health and Food Safety. He is responsible for the elaboration, development and management of the EU-legislation on contaminants in feed and food.
Dr. Katerina (Kate) Mastovska is Deputy Executive Director and Chief Science Officer at AOAC INTERNATIONAL, where she is responsible for leadership of all science programs and projects. She joined the AOAC staff in January 2023 but has been a very active member of AOAC INTERNATIONAL since 2004, serving in the past as a chair of several expert review panels and working groups, co-chair of the AOAC Chemical Residue and Contaminant Community, or member of the Official Methods Board. Kate is a Fellow of AOAC INTERNATIONAL and received the Association’s highest scientific honor, the Harvey W. Wiley Award, in 2021. Prior to joining AOAC, she worked at Eurofins Scientific and has most recently served as Chief Scientific Officer at Eurofins US Food Division. Kate has been actively involved in the analysis of chemical residues, contaminants and adulterants in food for more than 25 years and has more than 70 publications in that area. She holds a Ph.D. in Food Chemistry and Analysis from the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague.