Keracol Limited

ALT Iva Fernandes is assistant Professor at Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto (FCUP). She has a degree in Biochemistry and a PhD in Chemistry (2012) obtained at FCUP and since 2013 has been a member of the Food Quality and Technology Group from REQUIMTE-LAQV. Iva heads a research team dedicated to exploring the functions of phytochemicals in nutraceuticals, leveraging crucial advancements in comprehending their effects on human health, including their bioactivities and nutritional outcomes such as interactions within the gastrointestinal tract, bioaccessibility, digestibility, and their potential preventive effects against metabolic diseases. In this topic, she leads the workgroup Wine and Health from OENOVITI international network. Iva has also explored the incorporation of phytochemicals into cosmeceuticals and their ability to attenuate the natural skin aging process, as well as preventing skin related disorders.

ALT Dr. Yuanwen Teng is a Professor at the College of Agriculture and Biotechnology of Zhejiang University, China. He serves on the editorial board member of BMC Plant Biology, Horticulturae and other Journals, and is the vice president of the Pear Branch of the Chinese Society for Horticultural Science. He has long been engaged in research on fruit tree germplasm resources and breeding, plant genetic diversity, fruit tree biology, etc. His research areas include Pyrus phylogeny, Pyrus genetic diversity, pear cultivar differentiation, fruit coloration and quality formation of pear and mango, and pear dormancy, etc. He has published more than 180 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology, Plant Biotechnology Journal, New Phytologist, The Plant Journal, Plant, Cell & Environment, Journal of Experimental Botany, Horticulture Research, etc. He has been granted more than 10 national invention patents.

ALT Dr Christine Bosch is Associate Professor in Nutrition, School of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Leeds, UK. Her main research interest is on the health benefits of phytochemicals and other functional plant food ingredients. A current focus is on the potential of different betalains to modulate molecular signalling, and their relevance to promote gut and overall health. Her recent research has been piloting the role of betalains to human and animal (gut) health and related mechanisms including gut microbiome. Other research is focussing on structure-function relationships of different anthocyanins and their metabolites to lower cardiometabolic risk. Recent and current funders include Innovate UK, WBANA, Algae UK/BBnet, BBSRC, N8AgriFood, EU-FP7 and others.

ALT Samuel Brockington is Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge. He gained a BSc with 1st Class honours in Plant Science from the University of Edinburgh in 2002. He was awarded a PhD at the Florida Museum of Natural History, USA in 2009. The focus of his research group in the evolution of specialised metabolism, particularly betalain pigmentation in Caryophyllales and its curious relationship to anthocyanin pathways. Samuel is also Curator of the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and responsible for over 8000 and 1.1 million specimens in the University Herbarium, including Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle collection. In this capacity, he promotes the use of diverse botanical collections for research and conservation, manages the acquisition of new items to the collections, and plans the future direction of the collections. Sam is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, a member of the Botanical Society of America.

ALT Anna Katharine Mansfield is the associate director of Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, NY, where she also serves as an associate professor of enology in the Cornell Craft Beverage Institute in the Department of Food Science. She received a BA in English from Salem College and graduate degrees in Food Science at Virginia Tech and the University of Minnesota. Mansfield served as Enology Project Leader at the University of Minnesota from 2001-2008, where she developed a new enology extension program to serve the rapidly-developing cold-climate wine industry in the Upper Midwest. She spent a sabbatical leave at the l’Institut Universitaire de la Vigne et du Vin Jules Guyot at the University of Burgundy investigating the potential of cork structures to sorb wine flavor compounds. Dr. Mansfield has been a member of the Cornell Enology Extension Lab since 2009, where she strives to aid regional wineries through outreach.

ALT Professor Victor Freitas graduated in Chemistry from the Faculty of Science of the University of Porto (FCUP) in 1989. In 1995, he obtained his PhD in Biological and Medical Sciences in the University of Bordeaux II (France), specialization in Oenology. After his PhD, he returned to the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (DQB) of FCUP where he has been developing his teaching and research activities. He is currently Full Professor in the University of Porto and member of the REQUIMTE-LAQV Research Centre where he has been developing an independent area of research involving polyphenol compounds. He has more than 370 original articles published in journals indexed in the Science Citation Index, several book chapters, numerous invited conferences, running multiple I&DT projects and several supervisions of Master and PhD students. He was President of Groupe Polyphenols from 2016 to 2021.