International Fibre Summit 2019: Speaker Profiles

Dr. Reza Abdollahi is a Senior Research Scientist in Poultry Nutrition at Massey University’s Monogastric Research Centre. He graduated with a Master of Science degree in Animal Science from Tehran University, Iran and was subsequently awarded a PhD degree in Poultry Nutrition by Massey University, New Zealand. His PhD focused on the influence of feed processing on the performance, nutrient utilisation and gut development of poultry. Published in top ranking animal science journals, Dr. Abdollahi has more than 120 scientific communications – including 35 peer-reviewed articles, two book chapters and five edited conference proceedings – to his credit. He is currently serving as an Editor for the journal Animal, an Associate Editor for the international journal Animal Nutrition, and has been a reviewer for a number of international journals. His research on feed processing has drawn the attention of the industry and academia, and is recognised worldwide as providing new insights into feed processing technology. As an invited speaker, Reza has presented his work in a number of international conferences such as the European Poultry Conference (EPC, 2014), European Symposium on Poultry Nutrition (ESPN, 2017), International Broiler Nutritionists’ Conference (2014, 2017), Asia-Pacific Poultry Conference (2018), Australian Poultry Science Symposium (APSS, 2019) and many industry seminars. Dr. Abdollahi’s current interest is poultry nutrition, focusing on feed processing, feed evaluation and feeding strategies.

Dr. Mohammad Alyassin is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Huddersfield. Dr. Alyassin is originally from Syria, where he studied Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Chemistry as a first degree, followed by an an MSc in Food Control. Mohammad has recently finished his PhD on “Arabinoxylan Prebiotics Co-Production within Integrated Biorefineries” at the University of Huddersfield. Mohammad is currently a Knowledge Transfer Partnership associate, in collaboration with AB Vista, focusing on characterisation of prebiotic materials in animal feed formulations.

Dr. Juha Apajalahti obtained his PhD at the University of Helsinki, Department of General Microbiology, then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Michigan State University studying metabolic pathways of strictly anaerobic bacteria. After working in the corporate research centre of Cultor/Danisco/DuPont – the last five years of which he spent as a research director – he established the contract research company Alimetrics Ltd in 2003. Under his lead, Alimetrics has worked for more than 100 industrial companies/research institutes and completed more than 1,000 research projects for its clients. A typical project focuses on efficiency and mode-of-action of feed and food additives, especially their effect on intestinal health. Today Alimetrics employs 15 researchers.

Juha’s scientific background is in intestinal microbiology and health, and he has published over 150 scientific papers, book chapters and invited conference papers. He is also an innovator in 40+ patents/applications.

Dr. An Bautil holds a Master’s degree in Bioscience Engineering with a specialization in Agricultural Science (Animal Production) from the KU Leuven. Since 2015, she has worked as a PhD student at the Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry at KU Leuven under supervision of Prof. Christophe Courtin. Her PhD research focuses on investigating the impact of host-specific and diet-related factors on the functionality of endoxylanases and dietary fibre in wheat-based broiler diets.

Dr. Mike Bedford joined AB Vista in 2007 as Research Director, where he is responsible for overseeing the company’s research into feed enzymes, yeast, betaine and other associated additives. Mike co-ordinates almost 100 projects per year at more than 90 universities around the world at any point in time. Much of the work focuses on new product development and maximising the value of current products through holo-analysis of all accumulated data. Mike spends a significant amount of time at scientific conferences and visiting industry contacts, keeping him in touch with latest academic and industry advances. He has been able to publish throughout his working life; he has edited three books and written chapters in seven others, and produced more than 220 refereed articles and 70 abstracts.

Dr. John Black obtained his PhD at the University of Melbourne, Australia, quantifying the amino acid and energy requirements of growing lambs. He spent 20 years at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the last 23 years as Director of a Research Management Organisation. His research has spanned a wide range of disciplines and animal species including sheep, dairy cows, beef cattle, pigs, poultry and honeybees. He regards himself as a reductionist scientist endeavouring to understand the mechanisms underlying biological systems, but then integrates this knowledge back into whole animal and enterprise systems using computer simulation models for practical application. An extensive part of the research has been concerned with describing the chemical and morphological structures of cereal grains and quantifying the factors that influence energy availability from grains to different animal species.

Grant Campbell is Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Huddersfield. Originally from New Zealand, where he studied Food Technology for his first degree, Grant came to the UK in 1987 to study for his PhD on “The Aeration of Bread Dough during Mixing” in the chemical engineering department at Cambridge University. This led to an enduring research interest in bubbles in bread and aerated foods generally. Grant’s research interests also include wheat flour milling and cereal biorefineries, and in particular the interactions between the emerging biorefining industries and the traditional cereal-based food industries. Wheat and the other cereals form the origin and ongoing basis of civilisation, feeding the world and are increasingly called upon to provide society’s energy and material needs as well. Thus, cereal biorefineries are leading the transition to a more sustainable world, in which Grant’s research is aiming to exploit synergistic benefits of biorefineries to provide new fibre-based food and feed ingredients. He has published over 80 refereed papers and numerous book chapters and articles on these and related topics.

Professor Hank Classen was born and raised in Saskatchewan, Canada and completed a B.S.A. at the University of Saskatchewan. He then continued his training at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where he received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees. After briefly serving as an Assistant Professor at The Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, Hank joined the faculty of the Department of Animal and Poultry Science at the University of Saskatchewan. After forty years as a member of the Department, Hank retired on July 31, 2018 and was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Over his career, Hank rose to the rank of Full Professor and served in a variety of roles including Head of the Department. In 2013, he was named Distinguished Professor by the University of Saskatchewan and was also awarded a five-year NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Poultry Nutrition. Hank’s research interests are in poultry nutrition and management, and his Industrial Research Chair research has focused on the impact of rate and extent of starch and protein digestion on the performance, welfare and health of chickens and turkeys. He has authored or co-authored over 170 peer reviewed publications and supervised more than 55 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and research associates. Hank is a member of the Saskatchewan Poultry Hall of Fame, the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame and the World’s Poultry Science Association International Hall of Fame.

Professor Christophe Courtin is a Full Professor of Food Biochemistry at the Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Leuven, Belgium. His research focuses on cereals, cereal non-starch carbohydrates, dietary fibre and the enzymes that degrade them and yeast in cereal processing. His work focuses on the basic understanding of the properties of these components, as well as on their technological and health functionality in cereal based processes and products, using, amongst others, molecular biology as a tool.

Professor Luc De Vuyst obtained a PhD in Agricultural Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium in 1990. After research stays in The Netherlands, Canada, and New Zealand, he became a Professor of Industrial Microbiology and Food Biotechnology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 1994. Since then he has been Head of the Research Group of Industrial Microbiology and Food Biotechnology (IMDO) of the VUB. His research focuses on various food fermentation processes and human colon fermentation of prebiotics. He was promotor of 41 PhD theses and currently supervises 17 PhD students. He is author of more than 320 international peer-reviewed papers, 42 book chapters, and more than 370 communications worldwide. His work counts more than 14,000 citations and he has an h-index of 65. He is ranked among the Thomson Reuters highly cited researchers and the world’s most scientific influential minds (top 1 % of researchers) since 2014. Since 2015, he is a member of the University Board of the VUB and vice-dean of the Faculty of Sciences and Bioengineering Sciences.

Richard Ducatelle is a Professor in Veterinary Pathology at Ghent University - and since 1989 has been a diplomate of the ECPVS. His research interest is mainly in gastrointestinal health, with a focus on poultry and pigs. He has been a mentor of more than 20 PhD theses in this field of research. He is the author or co-author of over 650 scientific publications listed in the web of science and more than 400 abstracts in proceedings of international congresses. He is the inventor of more than 10 patents. He has been an invited speaker at more than 60 national and international congresses. Richard was a scientific advisor for the Belgian government from 1985 until 1989. He is a member of the board of directors of Ghent University.

Professor José Francisco Pérez Hernández, (PhD in Veterinary Medicine) is research leader of the Nutrition and Animal Welfare Service of the UAB (SNiBA) and Head of the Animal and Food Science Department of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He has been lecturing at the UAB since 1997, where he combines teaching with research and knowledge transfer activities. His research career has developed within the general framework of monogastric nutrition. It covers topics such as the interaction between the diet and the digestive tract, with a specific interest on the development of the microbiota and its role in gut health. The most common scenario for this study was piglet feeding, its feed preferences, the possibilities offered by learning strategies, and the evaluation and development of new additives. In recent years, he has also focused on mineral nutrition in relation to digestive and metabolic reactions in pigs and poultry. Examples are studies on the mode of action and development of new phytases or the use of zinc oxide an alternative to antibiotics in pigs. Most of these studies are conducted via outreach with private companies. The results of Dr José’s work in research include the coordination and participation in numerous public and private research projects, and supervision of 14 doctoral theses.

Knud Erik Bach Knudsen is Professor in Basic Nutrition at Aarhus University, Department of Animal Science, Denmark. For more than 30 years, Knud Erik has been working with different aspects of carbohydrates and phytochemicals. His areas of work have included: the development of new analytical methods for the characterisation of carbohydrates in feeds, foods and digesta materials; analyses of carbohydrates in a wide variety of feedstuffs; studies on nutritional and physiological properties of carbohydrates (particularly in pigs but also in other non-ruminant species), and investigations of the role of carbohydrates in prevention of digestive disturbances and establishment of parasites in pigs. In recent years Knud Erik has also been involved in several projects related to the nutrition and health properties of carbohydrates and phytochemicals in the borderline between animals and humans.

After completing his PhD., Knud Erik worked at the Carlsberg Research Centre and The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Copenhagen before joining the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences. He has been author and co-author of more than 250 papers in peer-reviewed journals, mainly related to the analytical, nutritional, physiological and health aspects of carbohydrates and phytochemicals.

Professor Gonzalo Mateos holds a PhD in Animal Production from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, a PhD in Veterinary Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and a PhD in Animal Science (Poultry) from Iowa State University. He works for the industry both in Spain and in the USA as Product Manager of the American Cyanamid Company (Wayne, NJ) and as Technical Manager, Chief Nutritionist, and Feed Mill Manager of one of the biggest Coops in Spain. Currently, he is Professor of Animal Science at the University of Madrid. He has published more than 110 papers in scientific journals and given more than 400 seminars, lectures, communications, and posters at national and international congresses. He was Editor in Chief of the scientific journal Animal Feed Science and Technology (2005-2013) and currently, he is a member of the Editorial Board of Poultry Science and Animal Feed Science and Technology.

Dr. Natalie Morgan is currently a Research Fellow in Poultry Nutrition and Education Officer for Poultry Hub Australia at the University of New England, Australia. She joined UNE in September 2015 as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow. Her main area of interest is feed enzymes and carbohydrate chemistry. She completed her doctorate thesis (2010-2014) and a year as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer (2014-2015) at Nottingham Trent University, England. She is currently researching factors that cause variation in feed ingredients, particularly focusing on non-starch polysaccharides, and the use of xylanases to produce xylo-oligomers and the effects of these xylo-oligomers in broiler chickens.

John Patience is Professor of Applied Swine Nutrition at Iowa State University. He earned his PhD from Cornell University. His research has embraced topics as diverse as electrolyte balance, water, amino acids and energy. Most recently, he has focused on the functional properties of ingredients, augmented with the use of enzymes, to understand how these can be harnessed to improve pig health and wellbeing, as well as growth performance.

John has published 140 refereed manuscripts, 15 books and book chapters, and more than 500 other miscellaneous documents, and has given more than 400 presentations at academic and industry meetings. He also serves as a consultant for numerous global feed and pork production companies. However, John’s greatest enjoyment is derived from training his graduate students for futures in both academia and industry.

Dr. Francisco José Pérez-Cano studied a Pharmacy degree (1999) at the University of Barcelona (UB). In 1996, he became a student in the “Autoimmunity and Tolerance Research Group” in the Department of Physiology. He then moved to the Center for Immunology at the University of California-Irvine in 2003 to complete his training and he completed his PhD on “Mucosal Immunity Acquisition in Early Life” in 2004. After that, he was hired as Associate Professor (2005), Lecturer (2007) and finally as a Permanent Lecturer (2011) in the Department of Physiology of the University of Barcelona. He is currently teaching different subjects in the Degrees of Pharmacy, Food Science and Technology, Human Nutrition and in several University Masters. He performed a post-doctoral training (2009) at the University of Reading (UK) and has participated in more than 50 research projects with public funding or in collaboration with industry. Francisco has more than 80 peer-review manuscripts, a book and several book chapters. His main research interest is immunonutrition in early life. He has focused on the impact on health of cocoa and its components and of components present in breast milk at preclinical level. His current line of research is focused on the effect of prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics and its combinations on the neonatal immune system. Francisco is a member of the Research Institute for Nutrition and Safety-UB (INSA-UB), Ambassador of the Spanish Society of Immunology (SEI) and Permanent member of the Ethical Committee for Animal Experimentation (CEEA) at the UB.

Professor Markus Rodehutscord is a Professor of animal nutrition in the Institute of Animal Science at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. His research explores amino acid and mineral metabolism of livestock including poultry and related aspects of feedstuff evaluation. A primary focus of the work is on characterising variation of different criteria of feedstuff evaluation and exploring possibilities to predict this variation. To date, Markus has completed supervision of 34 doctoral students and co-authored more than 200 original peer-reviewed journal publications. Markus is chair of the Standing Committee on Nutrient Requirements of the Society of Nutritional Physiology in Germany and a member of the Working Group 2 (Nutrition) of the European Federation of Branches of WPSA. From 2010 to 2016 he served as a Section Editor for Metabolism and Nutrition of Poultry Science. The Poultry Science Association awarded him the 2017 American Feed Industry Association Poultry Nutrition Research Award.

Associate Professor Eugeni Roura is a nutritionist with a special interest in chemosensory mechanisms in the gastrointestinal tract. After his degree in Veterinary Sciences (Universitat Autònoma Barcelona [UAB]) he progressed his studies on nutrition and digestive physiology, with an MSc and PhD in Nutrition at the Univ. California (Davis) and UAB, respectively. He joined the University of Queensland (UQ) in 2010, where he currently leads a research team with the main interest related to understanding the mechanisms involved in sensing dietary nutrients and their involvement in appetite modulation and food/feed intake in humans, pigs and poultry. Other affiliations include Senior Lecturer at the School of Biomedical Sciences (UQ, since 2011) and Foreign Professor at the Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities (China, since 2017). He is a member of several national and international Committees: International Steering Committee of the Digestive Physiology of Pigs (DPP), Standards Australia Committee FT- 022 (Sensory Analysis of Food), R&D and Education Sub-Committees of the Australasian Pork Research Institute Ltd, and Editorial Board of the Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology. Eugeni is the Vice-Chairperson of the Board Specialty Committee of Mongolian Medicine and past-president of the Australasian Association for Chemo Sensory Science. He has supervised 20 PhD and 4 MPhil students, published over 80 refereed papers and been a guest speaker at 42 scientific meetings and 107 university and industry seminars. Prior to joining UQ, he worked for the food and feed industries as R&D and Technical Manager.

Dr. Hans Stein is a Professor of animal nutrition at the University of Illinois. He has a PhD in Non-Ruminant Nutrition from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Hans currently directs eight PhD students, four research technicians, and a visiting scholar. His research focuses on feed ingredient evaluation and measuring energy and nutrient digestibility in feed ingredients fed to pigs.

Hans has given invited presentations on swine nutrition and swine production in 34 countries around the world. He has authored or co-authored 170 peer-reviewed publications, 256 research abstracts, 11 book chapters, and 126 conference proceedings, bulletins, and extension publications.

Professor Birger Svihus graduated from the Agricultural University of Norway in 1991 with a degree in Animal Science, and completed his PhD in Poultry Nutrition at the same University in 1997. He is currently a Professor with the Faculty of Biosciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway. He is the author or co-author of 73 peer-reviewed scientific papers (H-index 25) and is the author of or contributor to several books (including three within human nutrition), and numerous invited conference papers. His scientific work in poultry nutrition has mainly been within the area of cereal fibre and starch, feed technology, digestive tract function and feeding systems. He had a leading role in the organisation of the 14th European Symposium on Poultry Nutrition (2003) and the 14th European Poultry Conference (2014), organized under the auspices of World’s Poultry Science Association (WPSA). He was the president of the Norwegian branch of WPSA from 1996 to 2009 and the president of the European Federation of WPSA from 2014 to 2018. Since 2015, he has been Editor-in-Chief of British Poultry Science.