Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speaker I


Prof. Mohammed Mehdi Farid
The University of Auckland, New Zealand

Professor Mohammed Farid obtained his PhD and MSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Swansea, Wales and his BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Baghdad.
He was the founder of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Basrah in 1983. Since then, he worked as a full professor in the Jordan University of Science and Technology, the University of Science Malaysia and since 1997 in The University of Auckland, New Zealand.
He is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, London and an active member of a number of international societies. He has published more than 360 papers in international journals and refereed international conferences, 6 patents, 5 books and 10 chapters in books.
Farid has received a number of international awards such as the Matsumae International Fellowship from Japan (1986), a prestigious prize for being the most active in research in the University of Basrah (1990), the Hisham Hijjawi Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in Research in Jordan (1993) and the Marie Curie Fellowship, from European Union (2010) for his exceptional contribution to research on energy storage.
In 2010, he was short listed and came in the third place for the IChemE Innovator of the Year Award – sponsored by NES in the UK, and has been invited to a large number of international conferences as a keynote speaker. iN 2015, he was awarded the IAEF Lifetime Achievement Award in Food Engineering.
He is a member of the editorial board of three international journals and has been invited to join a number of scientific committees of international conferences.He is a world leader in energy storage with phase change and has provided significant contribution to the field worldwide.
His research expertise covers many other important areas such as the thermal and non-thermal processing of food processing, biofuel and waste management

Plenary Speaker I


Assoc. Prof. Susan Bastian
School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Austrilia

Dr. Susan Bastianis an Associate Professor in School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide. A large amount of her past and current research focuses on areas of significance along the value chain of grape and wine production in relation to: viticulture management and wine production effects on grape and wine quality; relationships between grape and wine sensory attributes, composition and quality; molecular drivers of sensory profiles; perception of wine and beer astringency and body; alternative grape varieties in Australia; Australian wine terroir, regionality and provenance; wine consumer marketing, cross-cultural differences, perception, preference, emotions, context and predicting consumer behaviour; wine and food interactions; flavour additives in wine; wine neophobia; new wine and food product development; rapid wine sensory methods and wine and food extracts in health, mucositis and colon cancer.
Her group have also conducted sensory research on abalone, chocolate, cheese, tomato, muntries, chicken meat, eggs and beer.

Her currently oversee a number of projects. In 2015 I was awarded funding from the South Australian River Murray Sustainability – Industry-led Research Sub-Program (IRSP) PIRSA 2015 as Principal Investigator (PI) in addition to funding from the Australian and Chinese wine and beverage industries to define a niche wine market opportunity in China, determine consumer extrinsic and intrinsic wine preferences, generate wine and packaging concept designs, conduct market evaluation of concepts plus undertake a feasibility review to ascertain the capacity of the Riverland wine region to make and determine production costs of such wines. I'm also PI on a 4.5 year Wine Australia funded project to examine contextual effects on Australian wine consumers' perceptions and preference and the wine attributes that drive both consumer emotions, liking and willingness to pay which completes in mid-2017. Multiple publications have arisen from this research which were the first to reveal wine product evoked consumer emotions; novel consumer segmentation bases; better consumer research method practices; influence of consumer research testing situations and novel rapid methods for wine flavour profiling using trained panellists and consumers. In 2017 my collaborators and I (at 20% in-kind) were awarded a Wine Australia 5 year project on understanding the drivers of terroir in the Barossa Valley. The outcomes of my previous research have already been capitalised on, adding value to operations through improvements to production systems in areas such of salt management and fruit processing.

Plenary Speaker II


Dr. Wei Yu
The University of Auckland, New Zealand

Dr. Wei Yu is working in Chemical and Materials Engineering Department, the University of Auckland. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Industrial Information and Control Centre (I2C2), Faculty of Engineering, The University of Auckland, New Zealand from 2008 to 2011. He received his B.E. (1993) degree in Chemical Engineering from Liaoning University of Petroleum and Chemical Technology, Fushun, P.R. China, Master (2003) and Ph.D. (2007) degree in Chemical Engineering from the Queen’s University, Canada. He worked as a process engineer at West Pacific Petrochemical Company, Dalian, P.R. China from 1993-1999. His main research interests include process monitoring, multivariate data analysis and process control and identification.