SPEAKERS

ALASALVAR, CESARETTIN., TÜRKIYE. Cesarettin Alasalvar (PhD, FIAFoST, FISNFF, FIFT, FRSC) is a Senior Chief Researcher at TÜBİTAK Marmara Research Center (State Owned)-Food Group. His research mainly focuses on the development of functional foods and nutraceuticals against life-threatening diseases (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and SARS-CoV-2 virus), nutritional and functional properties of foods (particularly nuts and dried fruits), bioactive properties of phytochemicals, the separation/identification of bioactives, bioavailability and bioefficacy of dietary polyphenols, and on performance of human clinical trials. He serves as the senior editor of Food Chemistry journal and associate editor of Journal of Food Bioactives. Dr Alasalvar has served as past chairs of International Society for Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods (ISNFF) and Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods Division of Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). He has been actively involved in the Framework Programme of the European Union, currently serving as the Turkish Delegate of Horizon Europe – Cluster 6. He has also been serving on the Academic Committee and World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination Committee Members of International Nut and Dried Fruit Council (INC) since 2015. Dr Alasalvar has received numerous international prestigious awards from different scientific societies, including IFT, ISNFF, and INC in recognition of his pioneering scientific achievements. He is the co-editor of eight international books in the disciplines of food, nutrition, and health.

BAER, DAVID. USA. (Under construction)
CUPARENCO,CATALINA. DENMARK. (Under construction)

DE SOUZA, MARY JANE. USA. Dr. De Souza is a Distinguished Professor of Kinesiology and Physiology, Director of the Women’s Health and Exercise Laboratory at Penn State University, and Executive Director of the Female and Male Athlete Triad Coalition. Dr. De Souza received her PhD from the University of Connecticut, and completed postdoctoral work in reproductive physiology and endocrinology at the University of Connecticut Medical School. Dr. De Souza’s research for 30+ years has focused on the complex interplay between metabolic, reproductive, and skeletal physiology, and is considered a preeminent expert in Athlete Triad physiology and has also focused much research on menopausal research conducting both hormonal and non-hormonal interventions. Dr De Souza has published over 200 papers and has had many extramural grants. Dr. De Souza has won teaching awards, several distinguished research career awards from several international and national organizations, and several honor awards.

GUASCH-FERRÉ, MARTA. DENMARK. Marta Guasch-Ferré, PhD, is an Associate Professor and group leader at the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She also holds an appointment as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, U.S. Dr. Guasch-Ferré leads a research group focused on integrating nutrition and lifestyle factors with –omics data to advance the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases. She has authored numerous publications in leading scientific journals, contributing significantly to the fields of nutritional and cardiovascular epidemiology. She was awarded the Sandra A. Daugherty Award for Excellence in Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, by the American Heart Association. Dr Guasch-Ferré is the P.I. of an NIH-funded project entitled ´Circulating plasma metabolites, lifestyle factors, and mortality risk’ and the ‘Nut consumption and prevention of noncommunicable diseases: a global individual participant data meta-analysis’ funded by the International Nut Council.

HU, FRANK (USA). (Under construction)
JORIS, PETER. (THE NETHERLANDS). (Under construction)
KENDALL, CYRIL,(CANADA). (Under construction)
LIU, GANG (CHINA). (Under construction)
MALIK, VASANTI (USA). (Under construction)
MECONI, PATRIZIA (ITALY). (Under construction)

MOHAMMADIFARD, NOUSHIN. IRAN. Dr. Noushin Mohammadifard is an Associate Professor and Head of the Nutrition Department at the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CRI), Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Iran, a WHO Collaborating Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. She also serves as the Deputy Director of CRI. With a Ph.D. in Nutrition Science from IUMS, her research focuses on dietary determinants of cardiometabolic health and community-based interventions on CVD outcomes. Has led several large studies, including the Isfahan Healthy Heart Program (IHHP), a WHO-endorsed model for developing countries, and the Isfahan Cohort Study (ICS), as well as contributing to multicentric study of Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiological (PURE) study. She has published over 260 peer-reviewed articles, some books, serves on the editorial boards of several international journals, and has been a keynote speaker at international conferences. Her work is internationally recognized, placing her among the most highly cited researchers in her field.

MOHAN, VISWANATHAN (INDIA). Dr. V. Mohan is Chairman, Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre at Chennai in South India which is an IDF Centre of Excellence in Diabetes Care. Dr. Mohan oversees a chain of 50 diabetes centres across 8 states of India and has over 6,65,000 registered diabetes patients in his electronic records. He is also Chairman, Madras Diabetes Research Foundation which is an ICMR- Collaborating Centre of Excellence (ICMR-CCoE) and Asia’s largest standalone diabetes research centre. His main research interests are Epidemiology of diabetes and its complications, Genomics of diabetes including Monogenic Diabetes, Precision Diabetes and Nutrition in Diabetes. Dr. Mohan has published over 1730 of papers which includes 1116 original articles with over 212.885 citations, a ‘h index’ of 157, and an i-10 index of 951. Dr. Mohan has received the Dr. Harold Rifkin Award and Dr. Kelly West Award from the American Diabetes Association and the Padma Shri, from the Govt. of India.

NISHI, STEPHANIE. K (CANADA). (Under construction)
PETERSEN, KRISTINA S (USA). (Under construction)
ROS, EMILI (SPAIN). (Under construction)
SABATÉ, JOAN (USA). (Under constrution)

SALAS-HUETOS, ALBERT. SPAIN. Dr. Salas-Huetos obtained his Bachelor of Science (Biology) in 2009, his MSc in Cell Biology in 2010, and his PhD in Cell Biology (Cum-Laude and Extraordinary Doctorate Award) in 2016. Nowadays, he is an Assistant Professor at Rovira i Virgili University (Spain), a Department Associate at Harvard University (USA), and a member of the (CIBERobn, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain). He has participated in 12 competitive national and international projects and he was awarded with 4 competitive, postdoctoral research contracts with a total of 40 months abroad as a post-doc. Albert has been teaching for 12 academic years at different universities with more than 800 h of magistral lectures (theory) and practicals (including Doctorate and Master courses). The main contributions of his scientific activity are reflected in a total of 94 original articles in SCI/JCR-journals. He has been awarded with prestigious prizes, including the PhD Extraordinary Award 2018 and the ASA 2025 Matthew P. Hardy Young Andrologist Award.

SALAS-SALVADÓ, JORDI. SPAIN. Distinguished Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Human Nutrition Unit – University Rovira i Virgili (URV) and ICREA Academia Investigator. CIBERobn Principal Investigator and Coordinator of its Nutrition Programme. He is currently Director of the Catalan Nutrition Centre (CCNIEC), President of the World Forum for Nutrition Research and Dissemination (INC), and a member of the expert panel of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group (DSNG). Prof Salas’ research has focused on human clinical trials to evaluate the effects of foods, dietary compounds and dietary patterns on obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. Since 2005, he has been one of the principal investigators of the PREDIMED study (n=7447 participants) and is currently the coordinator and chairman of the steering committee of the PREDIMED-Plus study (n=6874 participants), two large clinical trials for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and mortality. PREDIMED-Plus is a multi-collaborative project involving 30 research groups and has received national, European, Canadian and US grants. Through all these projects and collaborations, the group has developed skills in precision medicine using different OMIC methodologies, in particular metabolomics, proteomics and metagenomics, which we are now implementing in epidemiological and clinical studies. He is also involved in two prospective national and international cohort studies: CORALS (children followed for 10 years) and LEDFERTYL (men of reproductive age). He has published more than 750 scientific articles with more than 48000 citations and a SCI H-index of 101, has published 14 books and has supervised 40 PhD students. Has been named one of the world’s most influential researchers by Clarivate Analytics and Stanford University.

SIEVENPIPER, JOHN (CANADA). (Under construction)
SPRINGMANN, M. (UK). (Under construction)

VERHAGEN, HANS. THE NETHERLANDS. Prof. Dr. Hans Verhagen has over 41 years of experience in food safety and nutrition. He is a certified toxicologist and nutritionist. He worked at Universities (Nijmegen, Maastricht, Ulster, Copenhagen), in contract research (TNO), in industry (Unilever), for the national government (RIVM), and EFSA from 2015-2020. From 2006-2015 he was a member of the EFSA-NDA panel, working on health claims and novel foods. He is a professor at the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland) and at the Technical University Denmark (DTU, Denmark). Since 2020, he is owner and consultant of Food Safety & Nutrition Consultancy in the Netherlands (https://www.fsnconsultancy.nl/).