Vic Morris was trained as both a chemist and a physicist and his postgraduate research was in solid-state physics. As a postdoctoral researcher he held fellowships from the Ministry of Defence, the Medical Research Council and ICI. He joined the Institute of Food Research in 1979 with a brief to introduce molecular biophysical methods into food science. Current research activities include investigations of the molecular structure and interactions at interfaces, starch structure and function and the effects of pectin structure on functionality. Read more ...

Olav Smidsrod was born in 1936 and has been associated to the Norwegian Technical University (NTH; later NTNU) since the early 1960's. His main research contribution has been within the field of chemistry and physical properties of biopolymers, including biopolymers of marine origin (alginate, chitosan and carrageenan) and also microbial biopolymers such as xanthan gum. He is well known for his ability to combine fundamental understanding of bipolymers and the challenges of industrial products. Ha has co-authored more than 200 peer - reviewed papers as well as publishing several patents and book chapters. Read more ...

Professor Phillips is currently Chairman of Research Transfer Ltd, Phillips Hydocolloids Research Ltd, the Cellucon and Trusts and the Wrexham Gums and Stabilisers Conferences. He is a Visiting Professor and Fellow at the North East Wales Institute (University of Wales) and a Consultant to several industrial organisations, including to the Association for the International Promotion of Gums. Read more ...

John Mitchell graduated in physics and started his food research career in 1966 when he worked on protein stabilisation of foams and emulsions at the Welwyn Laboratory of Unilever Research. He moved to the University of Nottingham in 1970 where his work on the rheology of alginate and pectate gels led to the award of his PhD. Following a productive year working in the petfood industry where he was able to apply his expertise on pectate gels, he returned to Nottingham as a Faculty member. Read more ...

Professor Edwin R. Morris, Food Hydrocolloids Trust Medal winner, June 2009 Ed Morris began his work on food hydrocolloids in 1970, when he joined Unilever's Colworth laboratory, Bedford, UK. In 1984, he was appointed Professor of Food Structure and Processing on the Silsoe Campus of Cranfield University, UK, where he remained until 1999, when he moved to Ireland as Professor of Food Chemistry in University College Cork (UCC). Read more ...

Professor Nishinari worked for 20 years at National Food Research Institute (Tsukuba) and for 18 years at Osaka City University. He is a founder of a Japanese Society of Food Hydrocolloids and has been organizing Food Hydrocolloids Symposium every year in Japan since 1988. He also organized the 1st (Tsukuba, in 1992) and the 4th (Osaka, in 1998) International Hydrocolloids Conference. His main research area has been gels and gelling processes in polysaccharides and proteins. He organized a collaborative research group on gellan gum in the Research Group on Polymer Gels in SPSJ (Society of Polymer Science, Japan), and has been studying the gelation mechanism of gellan as a model gelling polymer. He has introduced some new methods to study gels and gelation mechanisms. He also has studied rheological, thermal and related behaviour of starch, agarose, kappa-carrageenan, xyloglucan, konjac glucomannan, curdlan, schizophyllan, hyaluronan, methyl cellulose, pectins, alginates, soy bean proteins, caseins, ovalbumin, gelatin, gum Arabic and published about 300 original papers, 50 book chapters, 100 review papers, and edited 10 books. He has been a Visiting Professor at Glyndwr University with Professors Glyn O.Phillips and Peter A. Williams. He has supervised over 20 PhD students at OCU and co-supervised several PhD students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University with Prof.Hongbin Zhang. He has also been working as a visiting professor at ESPCI (École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris) at the laboratory of Thermal Physics with Professor Madeleine Djabourov. He has been a host of many researchers at NFRI and at OCU. He was a recipient of various awards from Japanese Society of Food Science and Technology (2005), Japanese Society of Biorheology (2008), Society of Rheology, Japan (2007) and Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology (2008). Read more ...