Sarah Verkempinck

Sarah Verkempinck is a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Food Technology (LFT) at KU Leuven, Belgium. She received her PhD degree in Bioscience Engineering in 2018 from KU Leuven, in which she investigated how diverse emulsion characteristics impact lipid digestion kinetics, micelle formation, and carotenoid bioaccessibility under supervision of Prof. Tara Grauwet. In 2019, she became a postdoctoral researcher. First, she focused on establishing a mechanism-based multiresponse kinetic model describing the lipolysis process in the small intestine. At this moment, she is working on understanding how specific pectin properties affect the physicochemical and nutritional functionality of emulsions. Her research interests include nutrient digestion and how this is impacted by food design using static and semi-dynamic in vitro simulations as well as in silico modelling approaches. Her work was published in several peer-reviewed international journals in the field of Food Science and Technology such as Food Hydrocolloids, Food Chemistry, Food Research International, and Trends in Food Science and Technology (h-factor=13). She also actively participated in various international conferences.