Lecturers
Paul JM Hulshof (WU) studied biochemistry and Human Nutrition at Wageningen University. He is currently head of the chemical laboratory and physiological laboratory at the Division of Human Nutrition of Wageningen University (NL). In this position, he is involved in many human research projects, including food composition, conducted at the Division, and among other things responsible for teaching in body composition and energy expenditure at BSc and MSc level. He has participated in several EU funded project (e.g., EFCOVAL, EUROFIR, SMILING) and is since 2005 has been the Course Director for the International Post Graduate Course on the Production and use of Food Composition Data in Nutrition. He is a member of the Dutch Academy of Nutritional Sciences, member of the editorial board of JFCA, and reviewer of manuscripts for several journals.
Jean-Luc Volatier (ANSES) deputy Director for Risk Assessment responsible for methods, studies and databases at ANSES, has since 1993 led chemical dietary exposure assessment in France for a variety of substances including food additives, pesticide residues, environmental contaminants. He has been involved in the national individual dietary survey and the French Total Diet Study as well as participating in EU research programmes on dietary and chemical exposure assessment, such as FP7 FACET, and is coordinator of the FP7 TDS-Exposure. Jean-Luc has more than 70 publications in different fields of exposure and risk assessment and nutritional epidemiology, and has been an EFSA expert for dietary survey methodology since 2007. He is also Associate Editor for Food and Chemical Toxicology.
Aida Turrini (CRA-NUT) has a background in statistics. She has worked at the Italian National Statistics Bureau developing software (1979-1986) but has focused on nutrition since 1986 when she became researcher at National Institute of Nutrition (INRAN). INRAN became part of the Agricultural Research Council (CRA) in 2013. Aida has been involved in three Italian nationwide dietary surveys, and coordinated the most recent one. Director of the INRAN Scientific Program for the “database system: food composition and food consumption data”, Aida has considerable experience leading research teams in national and international projects covering a wide range of research where food consumption and food composition data are required including dietary evaluation and dietary exposure of the population. She has been on several Italian and European Committees as an expert in the food consumption and food information processing. She also teaches statistics and nutritional database management at graduate and post-graduate levels.
Susanne Westenbrink is a senior food composition database compiler, working for the Dutch food composition databank at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM, NL). She has worked in the field of food composition for nearly 20 years now and several Dutch food composition tables have been produced during that period. She has also been involved in several European projects, including the EuroFIR Network of Excellence. She is member of the executive board of EuroFIR AISBL, which develops, publishes and exploits food composition information and promotes international cooperation and harmonisation of standards to improve data quality of the food composition data. She is co-chairing the EuroFIR Food Composition Group.
Jayne Ireland (DFI) is a senior research scientist with 30 years of experience in the field of food composition data. She was a founding member of the French food composition data bank and was its director from 1992 until she retired at the end of 2008. At that time she was awarded the French medal of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. She participated in several European projects (FLAIR Eurofoods-Enfant, COST Action 99 – Eurofoods, Balaton, EFCOSUM, EuroFIR NoE and NEXUS) and food composition courses, where she promoted harmonisation of food composition databases. She now works part-time at Danish Food Informatics (DFI) on data documentation and food description, and is Secretary of the European technical committee of the LanguaL thesaurus for food description.
Stefan Voorspoels (VITO) is a pharmacist who specialises in analytical toxicology. He has expertise in a wide variety of organic and inorganic analytical techniques and food matrices. He has worked as a scientific officer at the European Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) where he was responsible for the certification of reference materials for food and environment. There, he developed a profound interest, knowledge and expertise in measurement quality and uncertainty. Currently, Stefan is scientific team leader of the analytical research team at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO). VITO is a contract research organization that develops, validates and applies analytical methodologies for amongst other things food analysis. The activities of VITO are ISO17025 accredited. Among his current research interests are new and emerging pollutants that have only recently entered our food chain and environment.
Isabel Castanheira (INSA) is a principal scientist at the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA), the Portuguese National Health Institute, and chair of TC 23 IMEKO Food and Nutrition Metrology. Her research activities are performed within three interacting themes namely: Bioinorganic Chemistry, Food Safety and Quality, and Metrology of Food and Nutrition. She is interested in analysing and studying the content of classical nutrients and contaminants in food products in terms of the comparability and reliability of the measurement values. Presently, this is undertaken as part of ORQUE SUDOE EU Project and Total Diet Study Exposure as well as other national and inter-continental projects. Her contribution to ORQUE SUDOE is focused on scientific aspects of food analysis originated from backyards of Sado estuary. The work in TDS-Exposure is focused on human exposure to food contaminants including heavy metals. She is appointed responsibility for Task 9.9 – Quality Management Practices, and cooperates scientifically with WP5 – Development and implementation of (a) quality standard framework for TDS Centres in Europe. Both work packages are committed to the development of a dedicated quality system, initially in pilot countries, but to be extended to all participating organizations.
Mark Roe (IFR) is a senior research scientist and has 30 years of experience in the field of food and nutrition, including sample analysis, human dietary intervention studies and food composition. He has been a compiler of UK food composition datasets since 1998 and has been involved in food composition at a European level since the EuroFIR Network of Excellence (European Food Information Resource) started in 2005. His work in EuroFIR included being development of the EuroFIR technical standard for food composition data, processes for assessing quality of food composition data and quality management framework for food composition compilers.
Karl Presser (ETHZ) is a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich in the Global Information Systems Group, led by Prof. M. Norrie. He trained as a computer scientist and earned his doctoral degree at ETHZ investigating data quality on food composition data focusing on basic principles of data quality and how a computer system can support users to manage data quality. Karl was the primary creator of FoodCASE, an information system to manage food composition data where (some) research work is incorporated. Karl continues this research work as postdoc mentoring PhD students and students. Karl participated in the FP6 EuroFIR Network of Excellence and FP7 EuroFIR NEXUS. Currently, he is a work package leader for FP7 TDS-Exposure.