Food Packaging from Plant-Based By-products: Sustainable Materials and Applications

Dr. Preetam Sarkar is an Assistant Professor of Food Sciences at the Department of Food Process Engineering, National Institute of Technology Rourkela, Odisha, India. He completed his Ph.D. in Food Sciences from Purdue University, USA. The research at Dr. Sarkar’s lab at NIT Rourkela focuses on the development of delivery vehicles such as emulsions, films and coatings, for the protection of bioactive compounds such as antimicrobial agents for food safety applications. He has published 30 articles in SCI journals, 10 book chapters, and co-edited 3 books.

Dr. Kunal Pal is a Professor in the Department of Biotechnology and Medical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Rourkela, India. His major research interests revolve around biomedical signal processing, biomedical equipment design, soft materials, and controlled drug delivery. He has published more than 100 publications in SCI-cited journals of high repute.

Dr. Srinivas Janaswamy, Associate Professor in the Department of Dairy and Food Science at South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, USA, has more than 25 years of research experience that constitutes interdisciplinary at the frontier between Carbohydrate Chemistry, Materials Science, and Life Sciences. His research program on ‘Functional Carbohydrates’ is about designing and developing novel carriers of bioactive compounds, biodegradable packaging materials, water purification, and plant nutrition. He has published more than 95 international peer-reviewed journal articles, so far, edited one book on “Natural Polymers for Drug Delivery and two special journal issues on “Green Physical Processing Technologies for the Improvement of Food Quality and “Advances and Challenges of Carrier Architecture for Bioactive Delivery Systems. Dr. Janaswamy has international research collaborations with groups in China, Kenya, and India, and is the recipient of the 2019 Global Engagement Research Award, and the 2022 David Fee Memorial Lecture Award. He serves as an editorial board member of Food Chemistry Advances, Functional Food Science, and Physical Chemistry & Chemical Physics.

Dr Miguel Cerqueira is a Staff Researcher at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, Portugal. His research focuses on developing sustainable, plant-based materials; polymer gels, specifically, oleogels; and innovative technologies such as encapsulation of functional compounds. He is the principal investigator for several research projects and has supervised over 20 Masters and PhD students. Dr Cerqueira has published more than 120 articles and is the editor of 6 books. In 2014, he won the Young Scientist Award, and in 2018, he joined the list of "Highly Cited Researchers" presented by Clarivate Analytics.