Research Partners

Dr. Endale is trained and experienced on food composition data production and management, food bioactives and nutrient analysis. He received his PhD from Addis Ababa University in Food Science and Nutrition. He was a research fellow at the Institute of Research for Development, Montpellier, France in 2013 and University of Padova, Italy in 2016. He served as Assistant Professor of Food and Nutrition Sciences at the College of Health Sciences, School of Public Health, Wolaita Sodo University, Ethiopia and a Senior Researcher of Food and Nutrition Sciences at the Ethiopian Biotechnology Institute. He supervised and evaluated over 30 postgraduate students. He also works on food product innovation targeting to valorize indigenous and traditional foods for nutrition and health.

With over fifteen years of experience working in various areas of nutrition; lecturing, research and nutrition programme/project management, his research areas encompass building capacity for prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition in infants and young children, investigating obesogenic and unhealthy food environment and systems through emperical research and addressing public health policy levers to address these issues. This feeds into a larger research area which seeks to provide a better insight into the epidemiology of nutrition-related Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and interventions to prevent/mange NCDs. He holds a doctorate degree in human nutrition and a master’s in public health nutrition – both from the University of Southampton, UK.

Dr. Srichamnong is a food scientist that has been fascinated with the effect of processing on nutritional quality of food. She grew up in the rural area of North Eastern of Thailand, I have been exposed to different types of fruit and vegetable which most of them are not commercially available or fully utilized. Nadine is currently working at the Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University. Nadine works on underutilized/ local food and fungi and studies the potential bioactive compounds with LC/MS, GC/MS, ICP/MS.

Natalia Vazquez Manjarrez, is a researcher in the realm of Nutritional  and Food Sciences. She earned her Master of Science degree from UNAM and subsequently pursued her Ph.D. and postdoctoral studies at the University of Copenhagen, where she specialized in nutritional metabolomics. Presently, she spearheads the Metabolomics Unit within the Department of Nutrition Physiology at INCMNSZ. In this role, she is responsible for managing the targeted metabolomics platform and advancing analytical methodologies. Her research endeavors primarily focus on elucidating the nutritional composition of foods and unveiling dietary biomarkers. These efforts aim to bridge the intricate relationship between diet and health.

Dr. Andres Jaramillo-Botero earned an Electrical Engineering Bachelor of Science from Boston University (1986), a Master’s of Science in Computer Science as a Fulbright Scholar from the State University of New York (1990), and PhD in Engineering (nano-scale dynamics) from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (1998). He completed his doctoral work as a visiting researcher at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) between 1996-1997, and followed up with postdoctoral work in Nanoscale Science as an NSF fellow (US National Science Foundation), at Caltech and at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), between 2002 and 2005. Dr. Jaramillo-Botero joined Caltech full time in 2006. He is currently the Director of Multiscale Science and Simulation at the Institute’s Materials and Process Simulation Center, within the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering division. At Caltech, he has led/co-led multiple U.S. government and industry-funded research programs (DOE, DOD, DOT, NSF, NASA, Samsung-S Korea, Total-France, DOW-Chemical, Intel Corp, among others), as well as authored numerous peer-reviewed scientific publications and patents. Since 1990, Dr. Jaramillo-Botero has been a member of the academic community of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ) in Cali, where he achieved full professorship in 1999, and was admitted into the Javeriana honor society in 2001. At PUJ he has occupied multiple posts, including Dean of Engineering (1998-2004), University council board member (1998-2004), Chair of the Computer Science program, founding Chair of the Electronics Engineering undergraduate and founding Director of the Doctoral program in Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is the Scientific Director of the international, multi institutional research alliance OMICAS, a Colombian-government program in Food science funded through the World Bank, anchored at PUJ Cali, for the optimization and development of agricultural plant varieties with improved traits, using omics characterization.

His research aims to develop and apply ecological and genomic analyses, to understand, monitor and better manage biodiversity, particularly adaptation in the face of the anthropogenic threats of habitat fragmentation, invasive species and climate change. Andrew collaborated with over 300 researchers from nearly 100 institutes and 30 countries. He is passionate about communicating science to a general audience, particularly on the threats and solutions to biodiversity pressures, and used these skills to the full during a recent term as Acting Director of the South Australian Museum. He leads a number of national and regional research programs, including the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) for which he was Associate Science Director, and established the Transects for Environmental Monitoring and Decision-making (TREND) program. He works to develop partnerships with industry and government and act as the key interface with partners across the area of food innovation, and help maximise benefits to the community and the University of its world-class research and teaching capability in this area.

Justin Siegel is an Associate Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine at UC Davis as well as the Faculty Director of the Innovation Institute for Food and Health. He serves as the Principal Investigator of the PTFI Center of Excellence for North America. 

Professor Siegel’s scientific efforts are focused on combining computational and experimental tools to develop a fundamental knowledge of enzyme catalysis, and apply  ing those principles to design novel proteins of therapeutic or commercial interest. Currently he is working with an international community on the development of Rosetta computational methodology for predicting and designing macromolecular structures, interactions, and functions. Using this methodology he has completed the de novo design of enzymes capable of catalyzing chemical reactions not found in nature, such as the Diels-Alder reaction. This was followed up by working with an online community, Foldit, to further engineer these proteins for enhanced activity. Most recently he has worked on the redesign of naturally occurring enzymes for the degradation of immunogenic gluten proteins, to develop a novel CO2 fixation pathways, and design of a novel anthrax therapeutic. His current focus is on the design of novel biofuel and commodity chemical biosynthetic pathways, the development of novel therapeutics, and the general understanding of the relationship between protein sequence, structure, and function.

Dr Vincent Lal is a Manager Analytical Services at the University of the South Pacific, Institute of Applied Sciences. He received his PhD from the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) and graduate degrees (MSc in Analytical Chemistry) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Chemistry from the University of the South Pacific (Suva, Fiji). Vincent’s research focuses on human health risk assessment, Pacific Islands Foods Composition and more recently on contaminants in Foods and on issues around antimicrobial resistance. He works closely with governments in Pacific Island Countries as well as regional (Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and Pacific Community) and UN agencies (World Health Organisation, Food and Agriculture Organisation and the United Nations Development Programme) on the development of monitoring strategies for the protection of human and environmental health in Pacific Island Countries. Over the last 12 years, Dr Lal has established local and regional networks in the Pacific Island Region for monitoring contaminants in the environment as well as investigating nutritional value of foods imported, grown and produced in PIR. He is also involved in capacity building and development related projects in the region. Dr Lal was awarded the Greg Urwin Pacific Leadership Award by the Australian Government to further his research on human health issues relevant to Pacific Communities.

Robert Hall is a Professor of Plant Metabolomics at Wageningen University and Deputy Business Unit Manager of Bioscience. His research activities is centered around the development and application of metabolomics technology for plants, with particular emphasis on crop species. He use metabolomics approaches to gain a better understanding of the biochemical composition of plant materials and to ascertain how this is influenced by genotype and environment. He has established an extensive plant metabolomics platform comprising 8 LC and GC Mass Spectrometers supported by all required in silico tools for data management, processing and statistical analysis and metabolite databases. Robert received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Her research focuses on combatting malnutrition in all its forms, globally and in particular in low and middle-income countries, and including trade-offs with sustainability. Edith obtained her MSc degree in Human Nutrition from Wageningen University and PhD from Leiden University, at the department of Social Medicine. She served as the associate professor at the chair group of Nutritional Epidemiology at Wageningen University, and in 2008 she became personal professor in Nutrition and the Metabolic syndrome. In 2015 she was appointed as chair of Nutrition and Health over the Lifecourse, and subsequently chair of Global Nutrition in 2018. Since January 2019 the combined lifestyle intervention for the prevention of type 2 diabetes (SLIMMER) that was developed by her and her team over the period 1998-2018, is included in the Dutch basic health insurance; a true milestone.