ASIC 2025

Richard Stadler is currently Scientific Advisor for Nestlé, located in Lausanne, Switzerland. Richard obtained his academic degrees from the University of Pretoria, South Africa and the University of Münich, Germany (PhD). He spent most of his career working for Nestlé, mainly in Quality and Food Safety research, as well as in Operations (Quality Management). Until 2024, Richard headed the Nestlé Institute of Food Safety and Analytical Sciences and chaired the FoodDrinkEurope “Contaminants” group. Richard is Editor of the scientific journal “Food Additives & Contaminants, Part A”, and on the editorial board of several journals. He also lectures at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and has authored over 150 scientific publications/book chapters.

Rodrigo Cunha is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine where he heads the Institute of Biochemistry and he is a Principal Investigator at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra (CNC) and Scientific Coordinator of MIA-Portugal (Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing). He is part of the Steering Committee of the European Neuroscience Campus, the National representative of the Network of European Neuroscience Institutes and a scientific consultant of the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC). He heads the group ‘Purines at CNC’, focusing on caffeine neuroprotection and purinergic modulation; his group is constituted by 5 resident PhD researchers, 3 post-docs and 4 PhD students. He has published over 325 papers with an h factor of 84. He has trained over 40 PhD students and 20 post-doctoral fellows and attracted funds from American and European agencies and private companies.

Prof. Andrew Smith is currently an Associate Professor in Biochemistry at the University of Milano-Bicocca where he specialises in the use of mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) as an integrative pathology tool to study molecular alterations associated with disease from a multi-omics viewpoint. However, more recently, he has also leveraged this approach to characterise the spatial metabolome of vegetable products in order to better understand the physiological role of their biochemical constituents. In addition to his academic role, Prof. Smith is also a member of the European Society of Toxicologic Pathology (ESTP) where he functions as a scientific expert in MSI and contributes to the dissemination of the technology within this field.

Cécile Chéron-Bessou has a background in agricultural sciences and completed her PhD on crop modelling and impact assessment of biofuels based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) at AgroParisTech in 2009. Since 2010, she has been working as a senior scientist at Cirad (French agricultural research and cooperation organisation) based in Montpellier, France. Her research topic focuses on the environmental impact modelling for perennial cropping systems. She had gained experience on various systems such as oil palm, coffee or coconut, in various countries across all continents. She has worked on improving life cycle inventories by connecting LCA with both mechanistic and empirical models and by developing a framework to better account for perennial crop cycles and soil health. She passed her HDR (Research Director Habilitation in 2021) and received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship (2022-2025). Besides her research activities, Cécile is involved in many associations and peer-review activities. Among others, she contributed to the GLAM 2 (global guidelines on LCA methodologies by UNEP Life Cycle Initiative), she is a member of the SETAC Europe LCA steering committee, the LCAfood conferences scientific committee, and the editorial board of the Sustainable Production and Consumption journal. Cécile has conducted various peer-review expertises and provided training on environmental impact assessments and LCA. Last but not least, she is an active member of the Women and Sciences association.

PhD in plant breeding.
Emeritus researcher in the field of plant improvement, with over 40 years' experience in plant genetics and biotechnologies. He is a specialist in varietal selection and crop adaptation to climate change. He has led several international research projects and collaborated with academic institutions and agri-food companies. He is the author of numerous scientific publications and has lectured at specialist conferences. Passionate about sustainable innovation in the agricultural sector. Retired, but still involved in mentoring and consulting projects.

Dora Batista is Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at ISA – School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon (ULisboa). She has a PhD in Plant Biotechnology from the Faculty of Sciences/ULisboa. In 2009 she joined the Coffee Rusts Research Center (CIFC/ISA), and since then she has been coordinating a research line on pathogen genetic diversity and evolution. Within a strong international collaboration, her research has been focused on the evolutionary population dynamics and the genomic and molecular mechanisms underlying virulence of rust (Hemileia vastatrix) and Colletotrichum kahawae (CBD-coffee berry disease). In the last years, we have reinforced efforts in rust genomic research to understand how genetic diversity is generated in a supposedly asexual pathogen and how it can adapt so rapidly to its only known host, which have important implications in pathogen virulence evolution and, subsequently, in disease management.

Zoran Nikoloski serves as the Chair of Bioinformatics at University of Potsdam and is a Collaborative Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam, Germany. Trained as a computer scientist in network science research at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA, Prof. Dr. Nikoloski moved to plant computational systems biology research after a computer science postdoc at Charles University, Prague, Czechia. In his 15 years of interdisciplinary plant research, Prof. Dr. Nikoloski has developed constraint-based models of plant metabolism and computational approaches for integration of omics data to improve the design of metabolic engineering strategies. Prof. Dr. Nikoloski has pioneered the hybrid modeling framework that integrate constraint-based models of metabolism, machine learning, and data from natural variability of different crops to predict agronomically relevant traits. This framework is currently used to gain understanding of the genetic and molecular basis for plasticity and robustness of metabolic traits to different environmental cues, crucial for the development of climate-resilient crops.

Lucas Louzada Pereira is the Chief Operating Officer of Mió Brasil - Co-founder and President of the Mió Institute. He holds a PhD in Production Engineering from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2017) and a Master's in Production Engineering from UENF (2012). He is a licensed professor at the Federal Institute of Education, Science, and Technology of Espírito Santo, Ifes, as a professor in the Professional Doctorate in Agroecology at Ifes and in the Doctorate in Chemistry at the Federal University of Espírito Santo. Furthermore, he works with research focused on quality control in agricultural production systems, and process control, with a special focus on coffee growing. He has worked in the studies of spontaneous and induced fermentation processes in coffee processing, and develops research in the fields of chemistry, biochemistry, and microbiology, applying different matrices to understand the determining factors of coffee quality. He is a licensed Q-Grader by the Coffee Quality Institute and Scientific Coordinator of the Coffee Design Group.