ANN VAN LOEY

Ann Van Loey is Full Professor at the KU Leuven, Centre of Food and Microbial Technology, Laboratory of Food Technology. The research of her team aims to understand and quantify process-structure-quality relations of food systems during processing, preservation and storage by optimal exploitation of the endogenous potential of fruit-, vegetable- and legume-based products or ingredients derived thereof. They investigate the influence of the processes used and the structures obtained on biochemical, chemical and physical food quality aspects during processing and shelf life. The research approach integrates reaction mechanisms, chemometrics (fingerprinting) and kinetics (including multi response kinetics) at different length scales (molecular, microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic) and time. This research is being pursued by a combination of fundamental as well as applied research projects through different funding channels and bilateral research collaborations with industry. During her academic career, she supervised 26 PhDs graduated, and is currently supervising 6 ongoing PhDs. The research efforts of her team have resulted in a research output of 388 peer-reviewed publications (WoS h-index of 62) and more than 20 book chapters. In 2017, she obtained the status of Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in the domain of Agricultural Sciences. Besides research and teaching, at present, she takes up several institutional responsibilities including academic responsible External Relations of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering (FBSE), member of the Faculty Board of FBSE, head of the Centre of Food and Microbial Technology and educational responsible for the Master of Bioscience engineering: Food Science and Nutrition.