• 
• 
• 
• 

Pre-congress Courses

Speakers

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Speakers

Plenary Speakers
The Committee is pleased to confirm the participation of the following Plenary Speakers, each a leader in their field and guaranteed to provoke debate and discussion and facilitate new learning:

Global Fats and Oils Outlook
Karel Valken, Rabobank
Karel joined RaboBank in 2006 as the Global Head Trade & Commodity Finance Agri Commodities in the International Trade & Commodity Finance Agri Commodities division.

Karel brings ten years of commercial experience to this role from previous roles as Member of the Board and Director of Finance with Nidera Handelscompagnie BV, Rotterdam. The Nidera Group of Companies is a well established (1920) Group active in processing, trading and shipping of agricultural commodities with sales in excess of US$ 4 B and a Group Capital base of US$ 300 mio. The Group is headquartered in Buenos Aires and Rotterdam. The latter is responsible for all global trading activities with trading offices in 22 countries. The main Regional Trading/Treasury Centers are in Singapore, Stamford (Ct.),USA, Madrid, Ipswich (UK), and Moscow. The Group is employing 1600 people of which 600 are reporting to Rotterdam. As Member of the Board, Karel was responsible for global commercial and operational strategy. Specific responsibilities included Risk & Trade Coordination, Treasury, Structured Trade Finance, Documentary Operations and Bank & Investor Relations.

Prior to this, Karel worked with MeesPierson, New York where he was responsible for overall management of the Commodity Finance Unit including operations, ICT and Treasury. This followed five years as Vice President with the Bank Mees & Hope NV in Amsterdam/Rotterdam. Here he was responsible for strategy and policy for the existing and new commodity markets in close cooperation with the global Commodity Network.

Health and Nutrition
Professor Paul Trayhurn, University of Liverpool
Professor Trayhurn holds the Chair of Nutritional Biology and is Director of the Obesity Biology Unit, at the University of Liverpool (UK). He has doctorates (DPhil and DSc) from the University of Oxford, was a NATO European Research Fellow at the Centre de Neurochimie du CNRS in Strasbourg, France (1972-73), and undertook further post-doctoral work in Oxford. From 1975 he was on the Scientific Staff of the Medical Research Council Dunn Nutrition Laboratory in Cambridge, before moving to Canada in 1986 as Professor and Heritage Scholar in Nutrition & Metabolism at the University of Alberta. From 1988-2000 he was Head of the Division of Biomedical Sciences at the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Aberdeen. He then spent a year at the University of Oslo, Norway, as Professor of Nutritional Biology, before moving to his current position in 2001. His honours include the André Mayer Prize of the International Association for the Study of Obesity (1983) and Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh – the National Academy of Scotland (1997). He has Chaired the Awards Committee of the International Association for the Study of Obesity since 1999, and has served on many National and International Committees. Between 1999 and 2005 he was Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Nutrition. His research has centred on energy metabolism and obesity; early interests were the role of thermogenesis in the regulation of energy balance, but his recent focus has been on the endocrine function of adipose tissue – particularly the link between inflammatory adipokines and the diseases associated with obesity. Professor Trayhurn has published 150 peer-reviewed papers and 100 review articles on energy regulation, adipose tissue function and obesity, and has been an invited speaker at >150 international scientific meetings.

Biodiesel
Werner Koerbitz, Austrian Biofuels Institute
After a career with multinational companies like Eli Lilly / USA and Sandoz / Switzerland as director of R & D, of marketing and of strategic planning as well as sales, Mr. Körbitz made his first experience with Biodiesel when he was appointed general manager of the worldwide first industrial scale Biodiesel production plant in early 1990 in Austria, then already the leading country in research and development of the renewable transport fuel Biodiesel.

He founded the Austrian Biofuels Institute in 1995 as a world-wide active centre of competence with today 25 expert members, which is involved world-wide in a number of projects such as Biodiesel standardisation, feasibility studies for and implementation of commercial Biodiesel plants, due diligence studies for banks, Biodiesel process technology comparison and other studies for the International Energy Agency, several Biodiesel-projects in the R&DDD-programmes for the European Commission, for the International Energy Agency -Bioenergy, the IFC, IAEA and UNIDO.

Lipid Science & Technology
Professor Alejandro G. Marangoni, University of Guelph
Alejandro Marangoni is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Food and Soft Materials Science at the University of Guelph. His work concentrates on the physical properties of foods, particularly fat crystallization and structure, as well as enzymology. He has published over 200 refereed research article and four books. He is the recipient of many awards including a 1999 Premier’s Research Excellence Award, the first Young Scientist Award form the American Oil Chemists’ Society (2000), a Canada Research Chair (2001, renewed in 2006), two Distinguished Researcher Awards from the Ontario Innovation Trust (2002), a Career Award from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (2002), an E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2002) and the T.L. Mouts Award from AOCS in 2004. Dr. Marangoni is a past chair of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Plant Biology and Food Science Grant Selection Committee, member of NSERC’s E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship selection committee, Editor-in-Chief of Food Research International (Elsevier), and an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society (Springer).

Olive Oil
Dr Rodney Mailer, NSW DPI
Principal Research Scientist
Pulse and Oilseed Genetics and Improvement

Research interests

• Canola breeding and quality
• Quality improvement in canola crops
• Chemical analysis and evaluation of edible oils for quality and nutrition
• Harvest timing, cultivars and processing for improved olive oil production

Background
Rod Mailer heads the NSW Department of Primary Industries edible oil research program. He joined NSW Agriculture* in 1979 and has managed research projects in various oil crops, particularly canola and olive oil during that time. He is associated with the release of 20 canola cultivars from the breeding program. Between 1990-1993, Dr Mailer studied and obtained his PhD at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada using HPLC and DNA-PCR technology to measure canola cultivar variation.

He represents the NSW DPI as a technical advisor to the Australian Oilseed Federation and is an honorary member of the Australian Olive Association.

He is the Australian representative on the International Standards Organisation for Fats and Oils and current President of the International Society for Fat Research based in Munster, Germany. Dr Mailer chaired the organisation of the International Rapeseed Congress in Canberra in 1999 and is currently chairman of the organising committee for the World Congress on Oils and Fats and 28th ISF Congress to be held in Sydney in 2009.

*NSW Department of Primary Industries was formed on July 1, 2004 through an amalgamation of NSW Agriculture, NSW Fisheries, State Forests of NSW and the NSW Department of Mineral Resources.

Qualifications

• BAppSc
• MSc.
• PhD

Dr Maria Tsimidou, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki
Dr. Maria Tsimidou is an Associate Professor of Food Chemistry in the Dept. of Chemistry at the Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki, Greece. She graduated from the same Dept. in 1977 and obtained her PhD degree in Food Science from reading Univ., UK in 1985. Her work is in the field of lipid oxidation and analysis and the role of antioxidants. Her teaching responsibilities are Food Chemistry, Food Analysis and Food Quality Control to undergraduates and postgraduates of the Chemistry. Dept. Prior to joining the University (1989) she worked for 11 years at the State Chemical Laboratory, Greece and as appointed lecturer at Higher Institutions. She is the author of a considerable number of scientific publications, chapters in books and encyclopedias, a great number of which is about virgin olive oil antioxidants/prooxidants and quality control. She participates in research projects funded by the EU, the Greek Government and the Industry.

Dr Martha Melgarejo, ASAGA, Argentina
I was born in Argentina on February 2nd in 1940. I was graduated as Chemists in 1964 and immediately I begun to work in the food industry. During 37 years I have had different positions in one of the big argentine food company, Molinos Río de La Plata S.A. At this time Molinos belongs to Bunge Group. My last responsibility was as R&D Manager in the area of edible oils, margarine, mayonnaise and other fat food. In this period I was involved in the selection of producers of extra virgin olive oil for my company. From that time I always have been in touch with olive oil activities in my country and same European countries. I retired in 2001. Now I am working as consult in food.

In 1989 a group of people founded ASAGA, Asociación Argentina de Grasas y Aceites, Argentine Association of Fats and Oils, and few years later we published our magazine, A&G –Aceites y Grasas- Oils and Fats.

I was co-author in same papers related to fats and oils published in AOCS Journal and A&G magazine.

I am married with César Sondereguer, pre-Columbian art professor and sculptor.

Invited Speakers
Olive Oil: Dr Christian Gertz
Dr Christian Gertz studied chemistry at the university of Erlangen/Bavaria. His doctoral thesis in the field of antioxidants was carried out at the University of Hannover/Germany. Since 1975 he has served as head of the department “fats and oils in foods” and since 1983 he has also been co-director of the Official Institute of Chemical and Food Analysis in Hagen.

Since 1997 he has chaired the division “Analysis and Standard methods” of German Society for Fat Science (DGF) and has been responsible for edition of the DGF Standard Methods”. He is a member of the “Joint Committee for the Analysis of Fats, Oils, Fatty Products” of DIN, Federal Health Office and DGF and various international working groups in Europe and of the German Sensory Panel of Olive oil. His main research focuses on development of efficient methods for food analysis and chemistry and technology of deep-frying.

Moreover, in 1982 he received the prize of the Josef Schormüller Foundation by the German Food Chemical Society, and in November 2004 he will receive the Normann-medal awarded by the German Society for Fat Science (DGF). He has published more than 70 papers in international journals and two books.

managed by: Conexion - designed & developed by: WEBO