Staff

• Prof Elna Buys
• Prof Riëtte de Kock
• Prof Gyebi Duodu
• Prof Naushad Emmambux
• Prof Eugénie Kayitesi
• Prof Suné Donoghue
• Prof Gerrie du Rand (Retired)
• Dr Lizette Diedericks
• Dr Hennie Fisher
• Dr Marinel Hoffman
• Dr Bertha Jacobs
• Dr Nadene Marx-Pienaar
• Dr Nwabisa Mehlomakulu
• Dr Nadine Sonnenberg
• Dr Hanri Taljaard-Swart
• Dr Adeline Pretorius
• Mr Peter Mukwevho
• Miss Charmaigne Sehoole

• Prof John RN Taylor
• Prof Elmarie de Klerk
• Prof Alet Erasmus

Professor Suprakas Sinha Ray

Prof Sinha Ray is Chief Researcher and Director of the DST/CSIR National Centre for Nanostructured Materials (NCNSM), Pretoria, South Africa. He received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Calcutta, India, in 2001 and was a recipient of the prestigious Sir P C Ray Research Award for the best PhD research. After three years of postdoctoral research at the Toyota Technological Institute in Japan, he spent two and half years as a postdoctoral scientist at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Laval University, Canada. Towards the end of 2006 he joined the CSIR Materials Science and Manufacturing group as Nanoscience Group Leader, in South Africa. In November 2007, he was promoted to Chief Researcher and founding Director of the DST/CSIR NCNSM, CSIR, South Africa. Prof Sinha Ray was the recipient of the prestigious Moran Lambla Award of International Polymer Processing Society (USA) for 2013. This is the top award in the polymer processing field.

Prof Sinha Ray’s current research projects are aiming to overcome the boundary between fundamental research and industrial applications and to obtain direct benefit by strengthening both worlds. His team research focuses on several types of multi-phase and multi-component polymeric systems such as polymer alloys, blends, composites, and nanocomposites, biomaterials, conducting polymers, engineering plastics and the like. However, the main objective of his research is to establish the structure-processing-property relationship of nano clay-filled polymeric systems. 

He is one of the most highly cited authors in the field of polymer nanocomposite materials and on 13 different occasions his work has been featured on various international journal covers. He was recently rated as a Top 50 high impact chemist in the world of the last decade (Feb. 2011, Thomson Reuter). Over the last few years, he has given more than 20 plenary, keynote or invited presentations at various international conferences. Prof Sinha Ray has also organized or co-organized a number of international conferences. He is the author or co-author of five books and ten book chapters on various aspects of polymer-based nanostructured materials and their applications. He is also the author or co-author of 140 articles in high-impact international journals, 14 articles in peer-review international conference proceedings, 30 articles in national and international conference proceedings, and the holder of several patents. Prof Sinha Ray currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Nanoscience and nanotechnology, Advanced Science Letters, the International Journal of Plastic Films and Sheeting, Applied Nanoscience, and the Journal of Nanomaterials.

Professor Mario Ferruzzi

As a Professor at North Carolina State University, the long-term goal of Prof Feruzzi is to identify food science strategies that contribute to the prevention of chronic disease in humans through the application of nutritional and dietary strategies. Working toward this goal his research program has focused on addressing the impact of the food matrix and processing on micronutrient and phytochemical stability, bioavailability and metabolism. His efforts include the development of methods for determination of micronutrients and phytochemicals in complex food and biological matrices; the characterization of food matrix factors that optimize the stability of micronutrients and phytochemicals; and the exploration of food matrix and ingestive factors that impact bioavailability and metabolism of phytochemicals from plant foods using preclinical and clinical models. His program also focuses on leveraging food processing and formulation strategies to address micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries. 

Professor Hely Tuorila

Professor Hely Tuorila holds an emerita position in sensory food science at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She received her MSc and PhD degrees at the University of Helsinki, majoring in nutrition. In doctoral studies, her second subject was social psychology, leading her research to food attitudes and their role in food acceptance. Her key research interest is to predict food choice based on sensory, hedonic and cognitive factors.

During her post-doctoral and sabbatical visits at the University of California, Davis (1986-87), US Army Natick laboratories, Natick (1993 and later) and the University of Florence, Italy (2008), Hely worked on consumer responses to nutritionally modified and unfamiliar foods, but also on perceived attributes of foods due to composition and processing. She has long-term collaboration with Finnish medical researchers on the genetics of chemosensory perception and preferences. With her colleagues and graduate students, Hely has published more than 160 refereed papers on these topics (Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9398-7235) and three textbooks in Finnish. She is internationally networked within the sensory consumer science community. In 2013, she received the Elsevier Established Researcher Award, and in 2020, the first E3S (European Sensory Science Society) Established Researcher Award.

Working at the University of Pretoria, Hely’s mission is to assist, supervise and mentor the next generation of sensory–consumer researchers in using and developing their capacity for the best of science in Africa. Collaborative research and pan-African networking in the subject area will lead to a better understanding of food consumers in Africa, thereby benefit nutrition counselling and product development.  

Dr Jeanine Kriek 

Dr Jeanine Kriek (formerly Sainsbury) completed her PhD in Food Science at the University of Pretoria in 2019. With over 20 years of experience in the local and international food and flavour industry, she has specialised in Sensory and Consumer Science — working with leading global companies and contributing to industry innovation and best practices.

Jeanine has been actively involved in the South African Association for the Flavour and Fragrance Industry (SAAFFI), and has presented at several international sensory science conferences. In 2018, she founded Jeanine Consulting (now rebranded as SENCORE), an agency that delivers tailored, time- and cost-effective sensory and consumer research solutions across food, personal care, and home care sectors.

She has published peer-reviewed articles in leading food science journals and serves as an external examiner at the University of Pretoria. Since her appointment as Extraordinary Lecturer in 2021, Jeanine has played a key role in strengthening the Department of Consumer and Food Science’s links with industry. She has led several large-scale collaborative projects through Enterprises at University of Pretoria, contributing both research leadership and practical industry impact.

Her current focus includes advancing research and training programmes that bridge academic knowledge with real-world application — ensuring that both students and industry partners benefit from rigorous, applied sensory science.

Dr Corinda Erasmus 

Dr Corinda Erasmus is a senior researcher at the University of Pretoria and project consultant at the Southern African Grain Laboratory NPC (www.sagl.co.za).  She completed her PhD in Food Science, focusing on the use of image analysis as a tool for predicting milling performance in commercial maize mills at the University of Pretoria in 2003.  She worked as a researcher and later Business Area Manager at the CSIR Biosciences Division (from 1991-2010, focusing mostly on cereals and grains processing and advanced manufacturing methods such as the use of microwave technology to pasteurise eggs and the production of modified starches.  Since 2010, she has pursued a consulting career specialising mostly in Cereals and Grains processing quality as a project consultant at the SAGL, along with several data mining research projects. She is the holder of four patents and author of several publications and two book chapters.  Apart from specialising in the use of technologies in the electromagnetic field (microwaves, gamma-irradiation, Infra-red and visual imaging techniques) to develop novel food processing technologies and analytical tools, she also worked on pelagic finfish, both for processing them to add value and developing alternative fish feeds with extrusion technology for the rearing of freshwater pelagic finfish. She has been involved in collaborative multi-partner European Union Research Framework projects since the Framework 4 programme, and has been active in all frameworks until the recent Horizon 2020 programme.