Previous Speakers

Prof. Nyuk Ling Chin
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Nyuk Ling Chin obtained her Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), United Kingdom in 2003. She is now a Professor with the Department of Process and Food Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She is a registered professional food engineer with Board of Engineers Malaysia and a chartered chemical engineer with Institute of Chemical Engineer, UK. She lectures on food engineering operations and systems. Her research is on physical and engineering properties of food and natural products with aims of structuring food tailored towards end-user functionality for improved texture, appearance, perception, shelf life stability, consumer acceptability and healthiness. Her focus operations include mixing, heating, baking, spray-drying, freeze-drying and extraction where physical properties including rheological aspects are studied fundamentally. Her most recent projects are on food authentication; in particular, honey and edible bird nest origin traceability. She has 160 journals published. She has been invited as a foreign lecturer to University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan and in Kazakhstan for the Kazakh National Agrarian University, Almaty, and S. Seifullin Kazakh Agrotechnical University, Astana. She was a visiting professor to the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM) India and now for Heze University, China. She has been invited to international conferences and seminars as a keynote speaker and is actively involved for different roles internationally including being a panel judge for research competitions, a panel reviewer for evaluating research grant proposals, a panel assessor for reviewing academic curriculum and programme and as the editor of the Journal of Food and Bioproducts Processing.

Prof. Byoung Ryong Jeong
Gyeongsang National University, Republic of Korea

Professor Byoung Ryong JEONG obtained his BS (Gyeongsang National Univ., GNU) and MS (Seoul National Univ.) degrees in Republic of Korea, and his PhD in Horticulture in 1990 from Colorado State Univ., USA on nitrogen nutrition in bedding plants. He had postdoctoral research on water relations in plants at Univ. of Missouri-Columbia, USA and on environmental control for plant production at Faculty of Horticulture, Chiba Univ., Japan. Since 1992, he has been affiliated with Dept. of Horticulture, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, GNU, Korea, where he once served as the dean of the college. His current research interest and topics include, but not limited to, organogenic and somatic embryogenic micropropagation of floricultural, medicinal and rare/endangered plants; propagation and hydroponic culture of floricultural, horticultural and medicinal crops in the greenhouse and plant factory systems; lighting technology in horticulture for control of flowering and photomorphogenesis; silicon nutrition in horticultural crops; and use of plants for removal of fine dust in the air. He has published 400+ papers in reputed journals (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Byoung_Ryong_Jeong). He has been academic adviser for 19 post-doctoral, 22 PhD, and 73 MS students so far. He also served as the editor-in-chief for several journals, including Horticulture, Environment and Biotechnology published by the Korean Society for Horticultural Science for which he is currently serving as the president elect.

Assoc. Prof. HE Jie
National Institute of Education, Singapore

Dr He Jie is an Associate Professor with National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She has been involved in studying productivity and physiology of high value vegetables grown aeroponically by cooling the root-zone while their aerial portions are subjected to hot ambient temperature since 1994. The innovation of the Year Award 2001, Singapore on "A Tropical Process for growing temperate plants in the tropics” was awarded to her research team. Recently, she received a Singapore Millennium Foundation grant to work on “Integrated Vertical Aeroponic Farming System: Towards Food Security and Sustainability in Singapore”. The integrated system uses LED lighting which could increase not only cropping density per unit land area but also productivity in a cost-effective manner. Based on her outstanding contributions in extending the frontiers of research and knowledge on vertical farming of vegetable crops under LED lighting, she has been awarded “The inaugural NIE Excellence in Research Award 2016”. Dr He Jie has published more than 80 scientific papers and books, and more than 80 conference papers. She has delivered 3 keynote addresses and 6 invited speeches in the international conferences. Dr He Jie’s total citation is 2117 (h-index: 25; i10-index: 42) by September 2018.

Assoc. Prof. DAM SAO MAI
Dean of the Biotechnology and Food Technology Institute, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dam Sao Mai is a microbiologist and a food professional with formal qualifications. She is a senior scientist and the dean of the Biotechnology and Food Technology Institute at the Industrial university of HCMC, Vietnam. She is also a PhD supervisor at the Institute of Bioengineering and Process Engineering, Szent István University, Hungary. She is also associated with several professional bodies including Asia-Pacific Institute of Food Professionals (APIFP), Asia Food Safety and Food Security association (AFSA), International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) as a member. She holds a doctorate in Biology from the Institute of Plant experiment and Genetics, Uzbekistan and a master in Food Science from Szent István University, Hungary via scholarship. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dam led and completed several academic and industrial projects on the development of microbiology and functional foods, food safety, food inovation and fruit juice probiotics. She published more than 70 scholarly documents in food science including probiotics. She is actively engaged in the professional and scientific outreach activities in Asia-Pacific region.