Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany
Loosing faith in claims on labels of food and other goods? Why pay extra for "quality" that is just an empty promise? We find ourselves asking these kind of questions more and more. Not good! Such a loss confidence harms our industry and has negativ impact on society. One possibility to regain trust are improved analytical methods. As is the case for, e.g., recognition of fraud in the food sector. With my research group at the University of Bayreuth I strive to raise the bar for adulterators. We develop methods to detect fraudulent activities and to ensure traceability across supply chains. Examples for our work include honey, edible oils (including olive oil), grains, fish and more. The analytical technologies applies typically yield analytical fingerprints or profiles harbouring an enormous amount of information. We use and develop AI based tools to mine the relevant information in these data to be able to verify authenticity of the samples investigated. Favourite technologies include (but are not limited to) NMR, NIR, MIR, LC-MS, Raman etc. As it is often unknown which technology is best to address a question by a non-targeted approach, we prefer to run samples systematically though several analytical technologies in parallel and combine the data as needed to obtain satisfying results. We termed this approach an analytical ecosystem, where fusion of data increases fidelity of the methods. A major interest is to develop efficient workflows how to apply AI to complex analytical data and how to shape the algorithms to give reliable results. My passion for food, analytics and data manifests also in participation in international expert panels (e.g., for USP, DIN, CEN, ISO, APIMONDIA) where I contribute with my expertise. Besides academic research I have an interest in transfer activities. In 2010 I was cofounder of ALNuMed, a spin-off from University of Bayreuth, which developed testing methods for food, in particular for honey and edible oils. The consortium for the development of NMR-HoneyProfiling(TM) was formed in Bayreuth and brought the method to the market in 2015. We are proud that today our development contributes to ensuring honey authenticity world-wide. Since 2020 ALNuMed is part of the FoodQS laboratory. At present, we work on an AI-platform for analytical data ... stay tuned!
Current Research Interests: Metabonomics and Metabolomics: Analytical Ecosystems and data fusion AI driven data analysis Validation concepts for non-targeted analytics Analytical Fingerprinting and Profiling Method Development: NMR, UPLC-MS, IR, etc. and Hyphenation of technologies Food Analytics: Fast and Comprehensive Screening Methods Authenticity and Quality testing Quantitative Analysis by NMR and IR methods Favourite foods for investigations: Honey Edible Oils (Olive Oil, Argan Oil etc.) Grains Fish ... basically nothing that is not interesting ;) Structural Biology (until 2018): Protein Misfolding and Selfassembly Interactions in Molecular Machines Paramagnetic Labels in NMR of Biomacromolecules
PI and Lecturer at the Research Center for Bio-Macromolecules (BIOmac, www.bio-mac.eu) and Department of Biopolymers (www.biopolymere.uni-bayreuth.de, Head: Prof. Dr. Paul Roesch), member of North-Bavarian Center for High-Resolution NMR-Spectroscopy (NZN, http://www.biomac.uni-bayreuth.de/de/NZN/index.html) The NZN is a regional center for high resolution NMR in North Bavaria providing access to liquid state as well as solid state NMR at fields up to 1 GHz (23,5 T; on order). Research Interests: - Protein Misfolding - from basic mechanisms to interference to bio-technological applications - Macromolecular Complexes - new ways to determine structure, dynamics, and interaction by linking experiment and simulation - Metabonomics/ Metabolomics - quality of food, discovery of bioactive metabolites, prevention, development of new analytical tools.
ALNuMed (www.alnumed.com) is dedicated to developing and offering next level quality assurance tools for food, biotech, and pharma industry. We use NMR-profiling to simultaneously quantify dozens of substances in mixtures, such as wine, juice, honey etc. and to derive quality parameters such as species, production steps, country of origin, unknown adulteration, etc. To overcome limitations associated with individual analytical techniques we develop combinations of analytical methods, in particular NMR, IR, and MS. These tools help customers to increase product safety, create innovative new products, optimize growth conditions of plants, discover new active ingredients in raw materials, optimize processing, and save time (analysis requires minutes!) and money!
Assistant (Habilitand) at the Department of Biopolymers headed by Prof. Dr. Paul Rösch working on Prion Protein Misfolding by NMR-spectroscopy. Habilitation in biophysical chemistry in 12/2006, venia legendi awarded 2007.
Research on protein folding and NMR spectroscopy of disordered proteins in the group of Prof. Dr. Peter E. Wright.