Dr Amanda Talhat

Chair

Amanda has worked on both consulting and technical projects ranging from Food & Beverage to Industrial Applications. She is also a member of the Trinity Engineers Association Organisation Committee, and is interested in encouraging more young alumni to take up mentoring.

Paula Haran, PM Group, UK

COMMITTEE MEMBER

Paula Graduated with an MEng in Biosystems Engineering from University College Dublin in 2013. Paula completed a work placement with PM Group in Dublin with their Food Department.

Dr Laura Mahli, Mondelēz International, UK

Committee Member

Laura has a Chemical Engineering master’s degree and Formulation Engineering PhD from The University of Birmingham. After her doctorate, Laura worked within long-term research at Unilever where she managed a team in new product development.

Prof Bettina Wolf, University of Birmingham, UK

Committee Member

Bettina has a degree in Chemical Engineering (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and completed a Doctorate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). She has worked in long-term research at Unilever and was an Associate Professor in Biomaterials science at the University of Nottingham (Food Sciences) before taking up her present post as Professor in Microstructure Engineering in the School of Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham.

Dr David Garrec, Pladis Global, UK

Committee Member

David holds an EngD in Chemical Engineering from Birmingham University (2012) and currently works for Pladis - the global snacking company - as a Technology Platform Manager in Baked Formulation.

Dr Fotis Spyropoulos, University of Birmingham, UK

Committee Member

Fotis graduated in Chemical Engineering in 2001 from the University of Patras (Greece) and subsequently obtained his Msc in ‘Food Biotechnology’ from the University of Ulster (NI).

Professor Philip Richardson, Campden BRI Group, UK

Committee Member

Philip is Head of the Food Manufacturing Technologies Department at Campden BRI. By background he is a Chartered Chemical Engineer and has practical and managerial experience gained from working in the food industry and in a variety of roles during his 30 years at Campden BRI (Formerly CCFRA).

Professor Serafim Bakalis, University of Birmingham, UK

Serafim graduated in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1994 and has a PhD in Food Science from Rutgers University (1999).

Stephen Davies, Tetronics Ltd, UK

Committee Member

Stephen is a Chartered Engineer, who joined APV in 1980 after graduating from Surrey University, UK with a BSc in Chemical Engineering.

Tom Bullock, PepsiCo, UK

Committee Member

Tom graduated with an MEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Birmingham in 2011. Following a few years at United Biscuits (now Pladis Global) in an ingredients development role, he joined PepsiCo in 2014. Tom is a process development engineer in their Global Snacks R&D team.

Saleh Sambwa

Committee Member

Saleh Sambwa graduated with a Meng in Chemical Engineering from University College of London (UCL) in 2014. Prior to graduation, Saleh joined PepsiCo as an Engineering Intern working within PepsiCo’s Manufacturing sites across UK and Europe.

Kalita Patel

Committee Member

Kalita graduated in 2014 with a degree in Chemical Engineering (M.Eng) from the University of Birmingham.  Kalita carried out her undergraduate industrial placement at PepsiCo R&D within the Long Term Innovation Department.

Ernesto Tripodi

Committee Member

Ernesto Tripodi is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham within the ‘Microstructure’ group led by Prof. I.T. Norton. His research focuses on the development of a novel emulsification technique, which combines a low-energy approach to the potential of delivering high-throughputs.

Conor McCarthy

Committee Member

Conor has been a Project Engineer in the beverage processing field since 2013 with Glanbia Nutritionals. Prior to this assignment Conor graduated with a BE in Process and Chemical Engineering from University College Cork, Ireland in 2013. During this time he completed an internship with Glanbia Ingredients Ireland in one of their whey processing plants in the area of operations and quality.

Dr Hii Ching Lik, University of Nottingham, Malaysia

Committee Member

Dr. Hii is currently Associate Professor in the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus. He received his BEng (Hons) degree in Chemical Engineering in 1996 (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology), MSc degree in Food Processing and Engineering in 2004 (Universiti Putra Malaysia), and PhD degree in Chemical Engineering in 2010 (University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus).

Luke McNamara

Committee Member

Luke McNamara is a practicing chemical engineer in the food and beverage industry. He graduated with a BEng in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering from the University of Limerick in 2014. Since then he started his career with Glanbia who are traditionally a dairy company. With them he has worked in Ireland and the United States in several industries such as liquid milk, cheese, whey protein and ESL/Aseptic beverages. He is currently working as the Technical Services Manager for a beverage facility in Southern California.

Rafaella Sammouti, Univeler, UK

Secretary

Rafaella completed her BSc in Chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 2015. She then did her MSc in Advanced Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. Upon completing her MSc in 2016, she then worked at Wolf Formulations Ltd where she was responsible for the formulation development of household products. In 2017, she joined Unilever where she worked on long term ice cream innovation projects. Rafaella is currently working in the Global Beverages R&D Process Design team of Unilever.

Chara Ngando, London South Bank University, UK

Webmaster

Chara is a full time student doing her first degree in BEng Chemical and Process engineering at London South Bank University. She also works as a Quality Control Assistant (part time) at Thames Distillers in London.