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Dr. Harpreet Kaur is a research scientist in the Applied Sensors Team of Plant and Food Research, New Zealand. Her research work focusses on optical spectroscopy in horticulture, particularly the use of near- and mid- infrared spectroscopy for measurement of fruit and fruit juice properties.

Harpreet was born and educated in India, graduating with an ME degree in Electronics in 2014, before studying in NZ and gaining a Ph.D. in 2020 from the University of Waikato. Her PhD work focused on investigating Aquaphotomics for fruit quality assessment using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The research resulted in a number of publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. During her PhD studies she also received the prestigious Three Minute Thesis (3MT) award from her university and  subsequently was a semi-finalist in the 3MT Asia Pacific 2017 competition held at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Institution
CREA: Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Via Po 14 – Rome 00198, Italy

Present position
Research Manager, degree in Food technology, University of Milan, Italy

Skills
Technologies of food processes
Processes, packaging and storage of food products
Planning, level of applicability, means and resources to employ for the improvement of agriculture and the food processing
Hygiene, HACCP and Quality
Non-destructive analysis (IR and NIR Spectroscopy)
Sustainable process technologies

Recent National And International Activities
Since 2015 Expert of the National Agrofood CLuster (CLAN)– Item 5: Agrofood plants
Since 2012 Member of the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIF-IIR)
2011–2012 Secretary of the 5th Italian Symposium of NIR Spectroscopy. NIR Italia 2012, Agripolis, Legnaro, Padua, September 26-28, 2012.
May 2010 – October 2016, President of the Italian Society for Near InfraRed Spectroscopy (SISNIR)

Zoltan Kovacs currently works as an associate professor at the Department of Measurements and Process Control and serves as an advisor of international affairs at the Institute of Food Science and Technology, Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life (formerly called Szent Istvan University, before Corvinus University of Budapest). He received his Ph.D. diploma in Food Science at Corvinus University of Budapest in 2012 and completed his habilitation in the field of Food Science in 2018 at Szent Istvan University. His original scope of research is the application and development of machine sensing systems, with a major focus on the electronic tongue, its related measurement protocol and data evaluation techniques. He spent three years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Kobe University, Japan between 2013 and 2016 working in the field of aquaphotomics. Since he returned to Hungary after his postdoctoral period, he has been also working with the near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and aquaphotomics besides his original field of research. He has been working with these novel measurement techniques primarily in the field of food science to detect food fraud and measure food quality. Currently, Dr. Kovacs collaborates and leads different national and international research projects and he also functions as the European liaison for the international aquaphotomics society.

Professor in department of physics at Trakia University, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria. She received master degree in physics in Plovdiv University, Bulgaria, 1979 and PhD degree in 1992 – ‘Application of Near infrared spectroscopy for estimation of feeding values of forages”. Specialization in Kobe University 1997-1998.

Field of research: Near infrared spectroscopy. Application of NIRS for determination of chemical composition and nutrition value of different feed and forages, analysis of soil, meat, milk and dairy products; diagnosis of mastitis in cows; detection of bacterial contamination of bio-fluid and food products, aquaphotomics approach in food analysis.