Ingrid Appelqvist Theme Leader, Food Futures Flagship Designed Food and Ingedients Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia

Dr Appelqvist is Theme Leader for Food Futures Flagship Designed Food and Ingedients research program at CSIRO.

Current activities

Dr Ingrid Appelqvist leads a team investigating natural food structuring and developing new food manufacturing processes.

Prior to taking up her role as Flagship Theme Leader in May 2007, Dr Appelqvist led research into Microstructure Design for Food Function with Food Science Australia.

Dr Appelqvist combines expertise in food microstructure design for controlled release, biophysics, and food material science, with significant experience in the European food industry.

The Designed Food and Ingredients research theme is investigating the structural functionality of natural plant materials and manufacturing processes to design foods that protect and maintain their nutrients and bio-functionality.

Dr Appelqvist’s research focuses on:

• designing food material composites using natural plant materials to maintain natural nutrients and bioactives
• development of bioactive separation technologies and control of bioactive interactions
• protein molecular structure/function interactions for controlling concentrated protein properties
• designing new food microsctructure and formulations to replace fat and starch functionality for low energy foods.

Background

Dr Appelqvist joined Unilever Research and Development’s United Kingdom (UK) laboratory in 1990 within the central research and engineering function, where she worked on:

• glassy states of carbohydrates
• phase separation behaviour of mixed starch systems.

In 1993 Dr Appelqvist moved to Unilever’s business development centre for the savoury food category, where she was responsible for translating research innovation into products such as sauces and dressings.

She returned to background research in 1996 and led a group in biophysics, encapsulation and release, concentrating particularly on controlled release of taste and aroma.

Dr Appelqvist moved to the Netherlands in 2003 to join the central food research and development function at Unilever.

Her research in the Netherlands involved understanding and clarifying the material properties and failures in complex food biopolymer composites.

This extended to the underlying mechanisms controlling food behaviour in-mouth and in-use and understanding the interface between food materials and body surfaces (for example, mucosa, skin and hair) under physiological conditions.

Dr Appelqvist joined Food Science Australia (FSA), a joint venture of CSIRO and the Victorian State Government, in July 2006 as stream leader and science manager of the Food Architecture and Process Engineering research team, based in North Ryde, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

In FSA she has worked on understanding the molecular structure of high amylose containing starches and the molecular structure of concentrated protein systems.

Academic qualifications

Dr Appelqvist was awarded a:

• Bachelor of Science with Honours in biology and chemistry by the University of East Anglia, UK
• Doctor of Philosophy in binding mechanisms of heavy metals to soil humic substances from the University of Birmingham, UK.

Achievements

Dr Appelqvist’s work has been recognised through:

• publication in high impact journals 
• more than a dozen patents 
• invitations to speak and chair at international conferences 
• successful European Union collaborative program
• serving as a referee for scientific journals and publications.

Speaking in the special symposia on Soft Nanotechnologies & Applications and Nanoparticles in Soft Materials - Colloidal Systems.