The Steering Committee

NutrEvent's Steering Committee is chaired by the event's founding partners and comprises European specialists in all aspects of innovation in nutrition and health. The Steering Committee sets the event's priority themes and ensures that the content is relevant (notably in the scientific field).

Companies:

 

Academia:

 

Clusters and professional organizations:

 

Biographies:

 

Douwina BOSSCHER

Douwina Bosscher has obtained a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Antwerp (Belgium).
She has been working as manager nutrition research (dept. R&D) for the BENEO group (BE) where she managed projects in diverse health-related fields, e.g. gut health, bone health, immunity, satiety and weight management. Afterwards, she worked as sr. manager nutrition science (dept. Functional Food Marketing) for DSM Nutritional Products (CH) (global nutrition team) with a focus on effective health claims development for a diversity of functional ingredients, incl. polyphenols, protein hydrolysates, bioactive peptides, lipid emulsions, etc.

Currently, Douwina holds the position of Leader Nutrition Sciences EMEA, Cargill Global Food Research, based in Vilvoorde (BE).

Douwina Bosscher is also Lecturer ‘Nutrition, xenobiotics and health aspects of foods’, and affiliated with the laboratory of functional foods and nutrition, dept. pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Antwerp.

Douwina Bosscher has expertise in conducting research projects in diverse health areas, working together with research institutes/ universities, incl. (multi-disciplinary) collaborative research projects (EU-FPs, IWT, NIH, NCI, etc.), giving scientific support to marketing teams and regulatory affairs, and interacting with customers. She has experience in representing the company in diverse organizations, presenting scientific concepts and results, and authored multiple book chapters and publications.

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Murielle CAZAUBIEL

Murielle Cazaubiel began her career in 1991 at the University Hospital of Nantes (CHU) in France. As a Research and Development Engineer at CHU, she managed intellectual properties and oversaw the application of the Huriet law by the clinical research organization. Two years later, Murielle had a position as an Engineer in charge of a team to create and develop the management of clinical trials at the Nantes’ University Hospital (CHU).

From this high expertise practicing and establishing clinical testing’ protocols during ten years, Murielle created her own company, BIOFORTIS, in 2002, to offer high level services for food companies. With its central lab specialized in metabolism biomarkers and its own clinical center, Biofortis leads full clinical trials in humans in the field of nutrition.

Since June 2009, Biofortis is part of Silliker group. In December 2010, Biofortis has been promoted as a Mérieux Nutrisciences Company.

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Antoine DAUBY

Antoine Dauby is currently Group Marketing Director for Naturex which is specialised in the production of natural specialty ingredients for the food & beverage, pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. He graduated in 2004 from a business school of Management (Lille, France).

He is also the Secretary of the Naturex Foundation, an independent entity with its own resources, which supports in particular education, medicine, and basic necessities in communities from which Naturex derives plant materials, outside of any economic interest. He is also member of the Vitafoods International steering Committee. This association includes experienced representatives of the European nutraceutical industry, which are committed to contribute to Vitafoods trade show improvement. Antoine Dauby is also member of the New Hope Supply Expo Advisory Board and contributes on behalf of Naturex to improve the understanding of industry needs and foresight regarding emerging trends leads for future Supply Expo programs and services in the USA.

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Sandra EINERHAND

Sandra Einerhand holds a PhD in Biomedicine. She started her career as assistant professor at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam focusing on gut health & disease. Thereafter she got an associate professorship at the ErasmusMC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands leading a team of up to 20 scientists.

Her research focused on drug and nutritional intervention to prevent or treat gut and infectious diseases. In 2004, she joined the health ingredients company Lipid Nutrition. As Director Nutrition and Toxicology, she initiated new innovative research on plant-derived ingredients in the areas of weight management, heart health and gut health. Since 2007, she is a Director Health and Nutritional Sciences at Tate and Lyle Innovation centre in Lille, France. She supervises the Innovation and Commercial Development team in Lille focusing on new product development and nutrition with a special emphasis on dietary fibres and health.

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Benoit LAPLAIZE

Benoit Laplaize is today the co-general Manager and Global Commercial & Marketing Director of Lesaffre Human Care .

After getting his MBA and Food MSc, he travelled for 7 years in the USA and in Australia to set up commercial subsidiaries for an ingredient industry. He then joined Armor Proteines (Bongrain Group) as Marketing Director, before getting his current position at Lesaffre.

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Catherine LEFRANC

Catherine Lefranc-Millot is qualified as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the National Veterinary School, Maisons-Alfort, France and has a PhD in Biotechnology from the University of Technology, Compiègne, France.

Prior to working for Roquette, she managed Research and Development on Nutritional and Health ingredients in a French dairy company. Several years were spent working in the area of milk peptides, proteins and hydrolysates with specific biological activities, compatible with food and nutraceutical applications.

In this context, Catherine Lefranc-Millot contributed to the registration of patents on many products; she monitored toxicological, pre-clinical and clinical studies on nutritional products, in order to assess their activity and safety, and also to set up files for submission to the regulation authorities for making claims. She supervised young academic researchers in the scope of partnerships with universities and research laboratories, and has contributed to scientific papers published in renowned newspapers or in technological magazines. In addition, she managed application studies to verify biological activities in final products after food processing.

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Christophe RIPOLL

Doctor of science from the University Pierre et Marie CURIE (Paris VI), Christophe Ripoll is a specialist in functional foods and nutraceuticals. His main research work at Rutgers University and Phytomedics, USA, was focused on screening and characterization of plant extracts for their anti-inflammatory activity and has helped the development of the plant extract, PMI 005, for anti-inflammatory and anti-arthritis applications. In an international program funded by the NIH, he also developed a screening platform to identify drug candidates modulating the expression of genes involved in various inflammatory syndromes from plant selected from the biodiversity of central Asia.
Moreover, he worked for several years for the Vilmorin group on plant research issues.
Dr. Ripoll is currently the Executive Vice-President R&D of NATURALPHA. He coordinates research projects and consultancy in health and nutrition and manages the activities of Consulting and Labs departments.

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Martine LAVILLE

Professor Martine Laville was born in France in 1955. She graduated medicine from the University of St Etienne in 1986 and obtained her specialty in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition in 1987. She went on to become Doctor of Medical Science in 1990. She was Associate Professor of the department of Endocrinology of the University of Lyon from 1987 to 1992. Then she got a position of researcher at the INSERM U 449 in Lyon from 1992 to 1997. She was appointed Professor of the Nutrition in Lyon in 1997 (Hospices Civils de Lyon and Lyon 1 University) and is at the head of the Human Nutrition Research Centre of Lyon since 1996 (CRNH), which has been extended to Rhône-Alpes in 2006. She is at the head of the CENS project (Centre for European Nutrition Safety and Health), which will structure all local the research in nutrition in links with the national network of CRNH and developing a European research network.

Her major research interest is about the pathophysiology of insulin resistance in obese and diabetic subjects with different approaches from substrate metabolism to molecular biology. Recently, she puts emphasis the adaptation to overfeeding and its metabolic consequences. She also works on the biodisponibility of nutrients especially carbohydrates and lipids. She participated to the French recommendations for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of Obesity and to different expertise from INSERM on obesity topics.

Professor Martine Laville has been President of the AFERO (French Society for Obesity Research) from 1995 to 2005 and is a member of several scientific societies both on obesity and diabetes. She is a member of the national scientific committee from Inra, vice-resident of the scientific committee from Hospices Civils de Lyon, President of the scientific committee of the medical faculty Lyon Sud- Charles Mérieux. She is the chair for the European Congress of Obesity in 2012 in Lyon. She has just been elected President of the French Foundation for Food and Health which main objective is to improve health by changing food habits.

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Jean-Michel LECERF

Specialised in endocrinology and metabolic disease. Head office of the nutrition department of the “Institut Pasteur de Lille”

Consulting agent of the department of internal medicine of Lille teaching hospital. Member the board of directors of the French Association for Nutrition. Member of several learned societies and of the French Association for Nutrition. Expert within the AFSSA (National Agency for Food Safety). Author of approximately 15 works and 400 scientific articles in the area of nutrition, obesity, diabetes, metabolism, arthrosclerosis…

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Alan ROWE

Alan Rowe trained as a chemist. After a spell in research with multinational companies such as AKZO, EXXON and BP he joined a high technology start company. Polymer Laboratories Limited (PL). During his time at PL he was responsible for new product development and contributed to the company’s success and rapid growth.

Alan moved to the University of Warwick in 1987 to take up a post in technology transfer. During his 12 years there Alan undertook a number of roles at a senior level associated with technology transfer, industrial development, innovation and European and regional development. These included relationships with local science parks, enterprise agencies and other economic drivers and was a leading player in a number of regional initiatives including bringing together the 10 universities in the English Midlands under the Mercia Initiative.

In 1999 Alan joined Rowett Research Services Limited, the knowledge transfer subsidiary of the Rowett Institute, as CEO taking the company through a transition from a service provider to a technology developer. The Rowett Institute is an internationally renowned research provider specialising in nutrition and health and in particular metabolic, gut and vascular health.

Following merger with the University of Aberdeen in 2008 Alan took on a cross university role for promoting knowledge transfer to the food and drink related industries. Alan continues to have a strong interest in innovation and the impact of the research community on economic growth. He has developed a wide number of industrial collaborations with the Institute and has fostered five spin out companies from the Rowett. One of these, Provexis plc, was listed publicly in 2005 and was the first company to obtain an EFSA Article 13(5) health claim. .

Alan was a founding Director of Scotland Food and Drink Limited, the cross sectoral public private company created in 2007 to drive economic development of the food sector in Scotland. He remains involved with the organisation as Chair of their Innovation Group and a member of the Executive Management Team. He has worked on a number of groups advising government on innovation and the food and drink industry and developing new mechanisms for academic-industry interaction. He holds a number of directorships and sits on the investment panel for a specialist seed investment fund.

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Kieran TUOHY

Dr Kieran Tuohy is currently Group Leader for Nutrition and Nutrigenomics at the Centre for Research and Innovation, Istituto Agrario di San Michele all'Adige, Fondazione Edmund Mach (FEM), in Trentino Italy. The groups research is focused on assessing the health promoting activities of dairy products and whole plant foods, especially fruits, using both in vitro modles and direct human dietary interventions.

The group works in close collaboration with the metabolomics and pyrosequencing platforms at FEM and applies these high resolution technologies to attain a more comprehensive picture of how functional foods may impact on human health. The group was established through an incomming team grant through the Marie-Curie Provincia Autonoma di Trento COFUND scheme in May 2010 and has strong research collaborations both within Italy and throughout the EU. Prior to moving to Trentino, Dr Tuohy was lecturer in Food Metabolomics at the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, The University of Reading, U.K.

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Luc VAN GAAL

 

 

 

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Doris BELL

Doris has got a Ph.D in biology and a second degree in marketing. She has been working in the agro-food sector for 20 years. She has hold various positions in application technology, marketing, business development and R&D. Most recently she has been Research Fellow and Group Leader in the food ingredient industry for 5 years, before accepting her current position as Senior Scientific Officer serving the European Commission as part of the national consultancy and expert group for FP7 (7. European research framewok programme). With her longstanding experience in academic, public and private institutions and in customer relationship management she adds valueable expertise re Open Innovation.

Doris is holding several patents and has published in peer review and trade magazines, while acting as invited speaker at international conferences in the nutrition & health area.

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Kees DE GOOIJER

After the MSc degree in Food Science Kees de Gooijer started to work with Cebeco-Handelsraad in the IT sector. From 1988 he worked at the department of prof.dr.ir. J. Tramper, the Food & BioProcess Engineering group, at Wageningen University, from 1995 till 1999 as a Associate Professor. Besides research in the field of Animal Cell Technology he was responsible for the curriculum of Bioprocess Engineering. During January 1999 until April 2000 he was director of the Educational Institute of Technology and Nutrition of Wageningen University. From April 2000 till October 2003 he was director of State Institute of Food Safety (RIKILT). After this, he was the General Director of the Agrotechnology and Food Sciences Group, of Wageningen University and Research Center. This included 20 full chairs of Wageningen University as well as the applied research institute Agrotechnology & Food Innovations Ltd.

Since oktober 2006 he is managing director of Food & Nutrition Delta. This innovation program is carried out in dialogue with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and its subsidiaries. Within a framework of five years a total investment, along with accompanying measures, in food innovation of at least 200 M€ is foreseen.

Besides this dr.ir. de Gooijer is chairman of the board of B-Basic, an innovation program for sustainable chemistry, member of the executive committee of the Dutch Separation Technology Institute, board member of the international advisory committee for an investment program of Yes Bank in India, international science advisory council member of AFMnet in Canada, advisory board member of BF3 Ltd, Syntens Noord-Oost and Schuttelaar & partners Ltd, and member of several editorial boards in life sciences.

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François HEROUFOSSE

François Heroufosse has a degree in Bio-Engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. After a career in the food and ingredients sector within the Puratos and Beneo Groups, he took the direction of the Competitiveness Cluster WagrALIM in Wallonia, Belgium. Among the 4 strategic domains of the Cluster, Nutrition and Health comes at the first place.

Several research and innovation projects are ongoing, with a first large project that was concluded at the end of 2010 (Walnut-20). This project allowed to develop new tools and ingredients in the field of metabolic syndrome and gut function. Some important industrial players are member of the Cluster, like Beneo-group, Cosucra, Kraft, Belovo (Colombus concept), Spa waters. WagrALIM collaborates with important Academies, like Catholic Universtity of Louvain, Free University of Brussels and University of Liège.

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Dirk JACOBS

Dirk Jacobs holds the position of Manager Consumer Information, Diet and Health at CIAA, the Confederation of Food and Drink Industries of the European Union. In his position, he is amongst others working in the areas of food information to consumers, nutrition and health claims, nutrient profiles, and Codex Alimentarius.

Mr. Jacobs previously worked as a Public Affairs and Strategic Communications Consultant for PA Europe in Brussels and The Hague for two and a half years. During this time, he worked for a wide range of clients in the agri-food industry, among others. Having studied in Maastricht, Milan and Brussels, he has a background in International and European Business Administration.

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Erwin LAMOT

Graduated at UGent in 1973 as Engineer for the Chemistry and Agricultural Industry (now called Bioengineer) with industrial and food microbiology as expertise. Obtained a PhD (doctor in Agricultural Sciences) at the same university in 1977.

Joined NV Amylum/Tate&Lyle (now called Syral), producer of (native and modified) starches and sweeteners from maize and wheat, in 1977 as head of one of the R&D departments. During my 27 year career at the company, the following positions at Group/European level were held: production manager, process and product development manager, engineering manager and environmental and quality development manager. Author of 11 publications and guest speaker at international congresses.

Since 2004, general manager of Flanders’ FOOD, the innovation centre for the Flemish food industry, with as main mission to improve the competitiveness of the Flemish food industry through the stimulation of (scientific/technological) innovation.

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Philippe MILLET

After studying biochemistry and physiology (Université Descartes, Paris) and after working in a research laboratory (now an Inserm lab), I began to work as journalist through collaboration with several magazines and newspaper – covering chemistry, pharmaceutical, food industries. I was more and more interested by food ingredients, their development, marketing, formulation.

In a previous technical press and information group, I had the opportunity to create my first magazine dedicated to food ingredients, flavours, etc.

Around ten years ago, I decided to launch a magazine on dietary supplements – Nutriform’Magazine – whose readers are pharmacists, health professionals as well as industrials.

Because of the functional foods and dietary supplements development, I created also, 5 years ago, Actif’s Magazine, a bilingual magazine on functional and health ingredients. The readers are food, pharma, cosmetics marketers and developers.

Now Business Group Media an independent private press company is also editing two others b-to-b magazines : Doses Magazine (pharma packaging and sub-contracting) and Expression Cosmétique (global information on cosmetics and fragrances).

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Jean-Luc PERROT

I became general manager of the cluster Valorial by the end of 2010 after having ensured the position of managing assistant for three years. My career has been exclusively marked by experiences in the the agricultural and food-processing fields. Epicurean from birth, I have always been particularly involved in issues linking human diet and health.

 

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Nico VAN BELZEN

Dr. Nico van Belzen is the Executive Director of ILSI Europe (http://www.ilsi.eu), the European branch of the International Life Sciences Institute, based in Brussels, Belgium. ILSI Europe is a non-profit institute that brings together scientists from academia, government and industry to enhance the scientific basis of public health decision-making in food safety, nutrition and related areas.

Before joining ILSI in 2003, Nico worked for five years at DMV International, the business-to-business division of Campina, where he established a laboratory to develop bioactive food ingredients. Subsequently he became head of the department Research and Analysis, which deals with product development, biochemical and physical analyses of food ingredients and pharmaceutical excipients. He also was involved in marketing support, business development and due diligence.

From 1986-1998 Nico worked for universities and academic hospitals in The Netherlands as biomedical researcher specialised in molecular cell biology, lymphoma and colon cancer, e.g. cloning the NDRG1/Drg1 and ICT1 genes.

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