Ciba Professor Emeritus, North Carolina State University
Professor Harold S. Freeman has experienced a 40-year career as a textile/dye chemist and served for 3 years as the team leader for the inaugural activities at NCSU that pertain to the application of biocolourants to textiles, evaluation of the technical properties of the dyed substrates, and development of analogs of natural select biocolourants. Phase 1 biocolourant application studies included waterless dyeing technologies comprising SC-CO2 and atmospheric plasma treatments, and will be extended to the use of digital printing. During Phase 2 studies, Freeman will also lead the evaluation of biocolourants for use in dye sensitized solar cells.
Since 2006 Professor Laurent DUFOSSÉ has a position at Reunion Island University, located in the Indian Ocean, nearby Madagascar and Mauritius. That volcanic island is one of the French overseas territories with almost one million inhabitants and 19,000 students. Previously, he was researcher and senior lecturer at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Quimper, France, where the congress Pigments in Food III occurred in 2004. Laurent DUFOSSÉ attended the University of Burgundy, Dijon, where he received his PhD in Food Science in 1993.
He has been involved in the field of Biotechnology of Food Ingredients for more than 33 years.
Before joining the University he was Research Project Leader at private companies such as Sanofi-SKW or Lesaffre in charge of natural aroma production using fermentation.
His main research subject is now focused on microbial production of pigments. This activity started 28 years ago and studies were and are mainly devoted to aryl carotenoids, such as isorenieratene, C50 carotenoids, adonixanthin, azaphilones and anthraquinones. Links with food science are established within the cheese industry, the sea salt industry, etc.
After being kidnapped for some years by the administration of his University in order to build the Food Science and Technology Department there, he “escaped” some years ago in order to have more time for research.
Richard Blackburn is Professor in Sustainable Materials at The University of Leeds in the UK. Richard’s key areas of research, focus around the principles of sustainability and how these principles can be applied in the fields of textiles, materials science, coloration technology and cosmetics. His research is important in terms of the contribution to basic research, fundamental discoveries, and influence on the direction of the field, making a significant contribution to the scientific community. Richard’s research also has significant impact in its application in terms of providing more sustainable products and processes for industry and society. Much of Richard’s research is centred around dyes and coloration processes and making them more sustainable; specifically in the field of Biocolours, Richard has done significant work in the field of anthocyanins and has developed methods to extract the pigments from waste and has developed application methods for their use in dyeing hair and textiles, and as cosmetic and food colorant.
He is a co-founder and director of University spin-out company Keracol Limited, which develops novel approaches to the extraction of active molecules from plant sources, and fractionating and purifying them for consumer applications. Keracol extracts are effectively applied in cosmetic products for hair coloration, hair care and skin care, including products that utilise biocolorants. In 2013 Richard was made a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Dyers of The City of London, and was given The Freedom of The City of London. In 2016 Richard was awarded the Silver Medal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists for Prolonged contributions to education and academic research and in 2017 the Fellowship of the Society. In both 2018 and 2019 he was awarded The Society of Dyers and Colourists Centenary Medal for best paper in the journal Coloration Technology, becoming the first author in history to win the award in two consecutive years. In 2018 Richard was co-Chair of the annual ACS Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference.
Derksen received her PhD in 2001 as a phytochemist from the Department of Bio-organic Chemistry at Wageningen University (WUR) on the thesis "Isolation, stability and identification of anthraquinones from madder root." She has extensive experience in the field of high-quality constituents from terrestrial plants and marine seaweeds and their application as textile dyes. Currently, she is focusing her research on UV-stable marine amino-like acids (MAA’s) from red seaweeds as a researcher at the Dutch Institute of Marine Research (NIOZ) together with Hanze UAS Groningen. Furthermore, she investigates anthocyanins present in brown seaweed in collaboration with Zeefier a Dutch company. Derksen gained research experience in industrial R&D departments as a principal scientist from 2005 to 2015. From 2011 to 2020, she was a professor of applied science at Avans University of Applied Sciences and HZ UAS, respectively.
Heidi Halbwirth is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Technische Universität Wien and the head of the research group ‘Phytochemistry and Biochemistry of Natural Compounds’ at the Institute for Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering. Her main research interests are secondary metabolism in plants, structure-function relationships of enzymes, and the valorization of bioactive compounds from natural resources. She has acquired extensive experience in polyphenol research of different horticultural crops, working for more than 25 years on numerous national and international projects in this field, obtaining several awards in the process. While her background in the past was exclusively focused on plant derived pigments, she has recently started to expand her activities to microbial pigments and their industrial application as natural dyes.
She is the author of numerous peer reviewed articles and has successfully coordinated two Marie Curie ITNs (within FP6 and Horizon 2020), the larger one providing research training activities for 20 Early Stage Researchers and 3 Experienced Researchers in 13 teams and 10 countries and is currently in the process of building a Europe wide network to attain funding for doctoral college under the auspices of Horizon Europe Marie Curie.
Gerardo A. Montero is experienced in Supercritical Fluid Technology (SFT) and he is the founder of Green Consultant Engineers in Raleigh, NC USA. Gerardo holds a B.Sc. (Chemical Engineering)., M.Sc. (Chemical Engineering/Polymer Science), and Ph.D. (Chemical Engineering/Soil Remediation by Supercritical Fluid Technology). Gerardo Montero was born in Venezuela and came to the USA to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 1990. In 1996, Gerardo moved to Raleigh to start a career at North Carolina State University (NCSU), College of Textiles, where he led and developed a cutting-edge technology of “Dry Dyeing Process” utilizing carbon dioxide (CO2) to increase the rate of dyeing, reactions, and treatments of textile substrates such as Polyester, Nylon 6,6 and Cotton.
Gerardo has been involved in the field of Supercritical Fluid Technology in different applications [such as soil remediation (Ph.D. dissertation), textile dyeing, polymer particle formation and coating by using Rapid Expansion Supercritical Fluid (RESS), polymer melt spinning, and extraction of herbal medicines compounds using carbon dioxide] for more than 30 years.
Before joining NCSU in 1996, Dr. Montero was a Research Project Leader at an Oil Company in Venezuela where he was in charge of the commercialization of innovating technology and product “Orimulsion”. Dr. Montero is the author and co-author of more than 35 scientific publications in different applications. Finally, Gerardo is a co-inventor of several international patents which were developed when he was at NCSU as well as working as a Consultant Engineer with Nike.
Alain Trémeau is full Professor at University Jean Monnet (UJM), France and member of the laboratory Hubert Curien (CNRS - UMR 5516). He is also affiliated as Affiliate Researcher at Chulalongkorn university, Thailand. His research activity covers various fields, such as Light and Matter Interactions, Color and Visual Appearance of materials, Color Constancy in Computer Vision, Color Science and Multispectral Imaging, etc. He wrote numerous scientific papers and book chapters, in the domain of Color Imaging and Computer Vision in high ranked journals and conferences in the domain. He is member of the EMJMD COSI consortium, at UJM his teaching activities cover Color and Multispectral Image Processing, and Computer Vision.
Kumi Yoshida is the Emeritus Professor of Nagoya University and Visiting Professor of Aichi Institute of Technology. After 6 years occupation in Research Center of Amano Enzyme Inc., she moved to Sugiyama Jogakuen University as an Assistant Professor. In 1993, she obtained her Ph.D. degree at Nagoya University under the direction of Prof. Goto and Prof. S. Marumo. In 2000, she moved to Nagoya University as an associate prof. and in April 2010 she was appointed as a full prof. of Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University. In 1994-1995, she stayed in Universität Konstanz (Prof. P. Böger) as a visiting research fellow, and in 2013 stayed in Helsinki University (Prof. K. Wähälä) as the scholar of Erasmus Mundus program for “Master of Science in Advanced spectroscopy in chemistry”. She received The Japan Bioscience, Biotechnology and Agrochemistry Society Award for the Encouragement of Young Scientists and in 1995, Salt Science Research Foundation Award in 1998, Groupe Poyphenols Scientific Prize in 2019 and Japan Bioscience, Biotechnology and Agrochemistry Society Award in 2023. She organized IWA2009 and ICP2014, jointly hosted with 8th Tannin Conference. Her research interests are in chemical and biological studies on flower coloration of anthocyanins, structure determination of polyphenols, synthetic studies on polyphenols (anthocyanins, flavones, flavonols, catechins, procyanidins and others), molecular biological and biochemical aspects of metal transporters involved in blue coloration, functional studies of polyphenols.