Prof. Roumiana Tsenkova received her master degree and Dr. Eng. (1988) in Automation from Technical University (TU) Rousse, Bulgaria and Dr. Agr. (2004) from Hokkaido University, Japan. She joined the Automation Department of TU Rousse in 1978 as Assistant Professor. In 1990, she became Associate Professor at the same Department. She began her career in Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) developing a sensor for disease diagnostics (mammary gland inflammation) under the supervision of Prof. N. I. Kirilin from Moscow Agricultural Academy of Science in Russia. In 1990, after becoming associate professor at the Faculty of Electronics, TU Rousse in Bulgaria, she was awarded the Japanese Monbusho Scholarship for post doctoral studies of sensors for robotic milking at Obihiro University, Japan. Later in 1992, she moved to Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, as researcher to develop non-invasive NIR technology for bio-monitoring. After completing her work at Hokkaido University, in 1996 she won a Faculty member position as associate professor of Kobe University where she advanced to tenured professor in 2006 when she established the first Bio measurement Technology Laboratory in Japan.

Since moving to Kobe University, Professor Tsenkova and her team have had numerous interdisciplinary projects financed by the Japanese Government. Her primary area of interest is the use of near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and multivariate analyses for bio-diagnostics and bio-monitoring related to functional studies in life science, bio technology and agriculture. Professor Tsenkova was the first ever to apply NIRS for non-invasive disease diagnostics. Recently, she demonstrated, through perturbation NIR spectroscopy of water and bio fluids, a clearer understanding of the relationship between the spectral characteristics of water molecular system and its biological functions. In 2005, at the International Conference of NIRS, she named and proposed Aquaphotomics as a new scientific filed to study the collective characterization and quantification of water molecular system that mirrors the rest of the molecular vibrations in the system and translate it into structure, function, and dynamics of organisms or aqueous systems.

Roumiana Tsenkova and her work are recognized throughout the world by numerous papers, invited talks, collaborative studies and patents. She has written more than 100 peer reviewed papers and book chapters. In addition to guiding her undergraduate and graduate research team at Kobe University, Professor Tsenkova teaches Fluid Mechanics (in English and Japanese) and Bio measurement Technology (in Japanese). Since 2015 she is affiliated professor at the Medical School of Keio University in Tokyo. In 2018 Prof. Tsenkova established the Aquaphotomics International Society and became the first Chairman of the International Aquaphotomics Society.

Since 2009 Prof. Tsenkova has been appointed as Deputy Director of the Kobe University International Office and since 2010 to 2013, as Director of the Gender Equality Office at Kobe University in Japan.

Professor Tsenkova has received Young Inventors’ World Exhibition Award in Moscow, in 1985, and Inventor’s International Exhibition Award in 1987. She was awarded 13 Japanese and International patents. In 1998, she received the Japanese NIRS Advanced Award. For her work on using wavelet spectral transformation for disease diagnosis, in 1998 she received the International Council of NIRS Award for poster presentation. In 2002, she received the NIRS Buchi Award and, in 2006, the highest award in NIRS, the Tomas Hirschfeld Award for her work on NIRS for Disease Diagnostics and Pathogen Identification and for establishing the new scientific discipline Aquaphotomics. In 2016 she was awarded with “Honorary Citizen of Ruse City” by the Mayor of the City of Ruse, her home town in Bulgaria. In 2019 she was awarded by Kobe University for the establishment of UNESCO Chair.

Prof. Heinz Siesler is an Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, with expertise in vibrational spectroscopy for chemical research, analysis and process control.

Since 2012 he is a Fellow of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy and he received several NIR spectroscopy awards (1994 EAS, 2000 Thomas Hirschfeld/PITTCON, 2003 Buechi). He also worked as guest professor at the Ecole Superieure (Paris, France), Kwansei Gakuin University (Sanda, Japan), Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan) and the University of Innsbruck (Innsbruck, Austria).

Prior to his academic position he gained industrial experience as section head in molecular spectroscopy and thermal analysis in the R&D Department of Bayer AG Dormagen, Germany.

He also worked as lecturer (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa) and Post-Doctoral Fellow (University of Cologne, Germany), after receiving his PhD in Chemistry (University of Vienna, Austria).

The test and application of miniaturized handheld vibrational spectrometers is a special research focus over the last ten years.

Dr. Richard Crocombe graduated from Oxford University (BA, MA, chemistry) and the University of Southampton (PhD, chemistry & spectroscopy) in the UK. He moved to the US, initially for a postdoctoral fellowship, and then joined Digilab (Bio-Rad) working on laboratory FT-IR instrumentation.  He held numerous positions at Digilab over the years, but concentrated on product and applications development, including step-scan FT-IR applications, and spectroscopic imaging using two-dimensional focalplane array detectors.  Following that, he had positions at Axsun Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and finally PerkinElmer, concentrating on miniature, portable and handheld spectroscopic instruments.  In 2017 he left the corporate world to set up his own consulting company, helping to commercialize new miniature spectroscopic technologies. 

He has been a co-chair of SPIE's 'Next-Generation Spectroscopic Technologies' conference for over ten years.  He was selected for the Williams-Wright Award for Industrial Spectroscopy in 2012, is a Fellow of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy, and was President of the Society in 2020.

He has published extensively on the technologies and applications for miniature and portable spectrometers, including a comprehensive review article in Applied Spectroscopyin 2018.  Richard Crocombe, Pauline Leary and Brooke Kammrath are the joint editors of the two-volume book, ‘Portable Spectroscopy and Spectrometry’, published by John Wiley in April 2021.

Professor Da-Wen Sun is a global authority in food engineering research and education. He is an Academician of six academies, including Member of Royal Irish Academy, the highest academic honour in Ireland; Member of Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe), one of the most prestigious academies in the world; Foreign Member of Polish Academy of Sciences, the highest lifetime honour bestowed by the Polish government; Fellow of International Academy of Food Science and Technology; Fellow of International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, and Full Member of International Academy of Refrigeration. He is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Food and Bioprocess Technology, one of the most prestigious food science and technology journals; Series Editor of “Contemporary Food Engineering” book series with already over 50 volumes published; and the Founding President of the International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (iAABE). In addition, he served as the President of the International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR), the world largest organisation in the field, in 2013-2014, and is now Honorary President of CIGR. He has significantly contributed to the field of food engineering as a researcher, as an academic authority, and as an educator.

His main research activities include cooling, drying and refrigeration processes and systems, quality and safety of food products, bioprocess simulation and optimisation, and computer vision/image processing and hyperspectral/Raman imaging technologies. His publications on hyperspectral imaging account for 66% of the total highly cited papers and 11% of the total publications in the world (Web of Science). Especially, his many scholarly works have become standard reference materials for researchers in the areas of hyperspectral imaging, computer vision, ultrasonic freezing, vacuum cooling, computational fluid dynamics modelling, etc. Results of his work have been published in over 1,000 papers including more than 600 peer-reviewed journal papers indexed by Web of Science (Web of Science h-index = 105, SCOPUS h-index = 111, Google Scholar h-index = 129), among them, 71 papers have been selected by the Essential Science Indicators^SM as Highly Cited / Hot Papers in Field, ranking him No. 1 in the world in Agricultural Sciences (January 2020). He has also edited 17 authoritative books. In addition, Professor Sun has been named Highly Cited Researcher in the last 6 consecutive years (2015- 2020) by Clarivate Analytics and has also topped the Stanford University list of World’s Top 2% Scientists (in the 996^th position of 161,441 listed scientists).

In recognition of his significant contribution to Food Engineering worldwide and for his outstanding leadership in the field, the International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR) awarded him the “CIGR Merit Award” in 2000, in 2006, and again in 2016, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) based in the UK named him “Food Engineer of the Year 2004”, in 2008 he was awarded “CIGR Recognition Award” in honour of his distinguished achievements as the top one percent of Agricultural Engineering scientists in the world. In 2007 he was presented with the only “AFST(I) Fellow Award” in that year by the Association of Food Scientists and Technologists (India). In 2010 he received the “CIGR Fellow Award”, the title of Fellow is the highest honour in CIGR, and is conferred to individuals who have made sustained, outstanding contributions worldwide. In March 2013, he was presented with the “You Bring Charm to the World Award” by Hong Kong based Phoenix Satellite Television with other award recipients including the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Literature and the Chinese Astronaut Team for Shenzhou IX Spaceship, in July 2013 he received “The Frozen Food Foundation Freezing Research Award” from International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) for his significant contributions to enhancing the field of food freezing technologies, this is the first time that this prestigious award was presented to a scientist outside the USA. In June 2015 he was presented with the “IAEF Lifetime Achievement Award”, this IAEF (International Association of Engineering and Food) award highlights the lifetime contribution of a prominent engineer in the field of food, and in February 2018, he was conferred with the honorary doctorate degree by Universidad Privada del Norte in Peru.

Prof. Peiwu Li obtained his master degree (1986) from Nanjing Agricultural University and PhD (2007) from Huazhong Agricultural University. Since 1986, he worked in Oil Crop Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Currently, he is academician in Chinese Academy of Engineering, director of National Reference Laboratory of Biotoxins Detection in Agricultural Products, director of National Demonstration and Promotion Base of Grain and Oilseed Quality Detection and Control, director of Laboratory of Quality and Safety Risk Assessment for Oilseed Products (Wuhan), Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and director of Key Laboratory of Detection for Mycotoxins, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Prof. Li mainly focused on quality and safety of foods and agricultural products, food analytical chemistry, quality control and risk assessment for the last more than 35 years. He is a member of Global Council for Innovation in Rapeseed and Canola (since 2008), an expert of FAO/WHO JECFA (since 2012), vice-director of Sub-Committee of Contaminants of National Food Safety Standards Review Committee (since 2010) and member of National expert committee on risk assessment of quality and safety of agricultural products (since 2007).

As important part of his researches, prof Li was concerned with basic studies and applications of NIR spectroscopy including (1) developments of NIR spectrometers, (2) proposal of novel analysis methods, and (3) a variety of applications such as quality analysis of oilseeds and their products, authentication of edible oils and process Analytical Technology.

Prof. Li received many awards including Second prize of National Technological Invention Award (2015), Second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award (2004 and 2008), First prize of Hubei Provincial Technological Invention Award (2018) and China Patent Excellence Award (2006, 2014, 2018 and 2021).