Dr Marena Manley has been a senior lecturer in Food Science at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, since 1999. After gaining BSc (Honours) and MSc degrees in Food Science at the University of Pretoria, Marena obtained her PhD at the University of Plymouth, UK in 1995. Her thesis covered new insights into wheat hardness by means of NIR spectroscopy. Marena has also worked in industry and for two years as a chemometrics development engineer for an instrument company. She has authored 47 peer-reviewed research papers, 4 book chapters and over 100 conference papers. She has supervised many post-graduate students and regular acts as an external examiner, and as peer-reviewer for several journals, as well as receiving 35 research grants. Marena is currently Honorary Secretary of the International Council for Near Infrared Spectroscopy (ICNIRS), and will be the Convenor of the 15th ICNIRS Conference in Cape Town, South Africa in 2011.
The title of Marena’s presentation at the ANISG Conference will be “NIR hyperspectral imaging: thousands of spectra for exploring heterogeneous products”
Dr Andrew McGlone is a member of the 20 strong Bioengineering Technologies Group at Plant&Food Research, New Zealand. He is based at the Ruakura Research Campus in Hamilton. His background is physics and maths, graduating BSc (Hons) and PhD (Nuclear Physics) from Victoria University in Wellington NZ. His prior job history includes periods as a Junior Lecturer and Research Assistant (Physics, Victoria University) and as a research specialist at the Building Research Association of New Zealand. He joined HortResearch (now Plant&Food) in 1993, first working on fruit firmness technologies. In 1996 he was awarded a Japanese Post-doctoral Research Fellowship and spent 8 months working on NIR research in Dr. Sumio Kawano’s Laboratory in Tsukuba (Japan). Since then his work has been largely NIR-based, covering applications in agriculture and medicine as well as horticulture. Currently he is researching optical light scattering methods for fruit firmness measurement and exploring application of hand-held NIR units in kiwifruit orchards and grape vineyards.
The title of Andrew’s presentation will be: “Successes and failures in developing NIR applications for NZ horticulture”.
Dr Veronique Bellon-Maurel is an agricultural engineer and professor in sensors for agriculture and agricultural products, specialising in NIR, and directs the Cemagref-SupAgro joint research laboratory at the Faculty of Agriculture, Montpellier, France. She gained her PhD in 1992 on the application of NIR to the on-line monitoring of fruit quality and the focus of her career to date has been in the use of NIR and image analysis for food quality assessment. She has written or contributed to many international scientific publications and is involved in several international research projects. Veronique has organised many international conferences, the most recent being CAC 2008 (Chemometrics in Analytical Chemistry). In 2004 she founded the French network for promoting NIR (HelioSPIR), and currently chairs it. Veronique has been a member of the ICNIRS Chairman’s Advisory Committee and will be the Convenor of the 16th ICNIRS Conference in France in 2013. Currently, Veronique is on a sabbatical in Australia at the University of Sydney, working with Professor Alex McBratney on the application of NIR to soils.
The title of Veronique’s presentation will be “Shooting for grape maturity, and current status of soil quality assessment by NIR”.
Dr Mary Lou Swift grew up on an 800 acres mixed farm in central Ontario, Canada, and graduated from the University of Guelph with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture and a M.Sc. degree in poultry nutrition. Mary Lou worked in the feed industry in Ontario and British Columbia for some 20 years and it was during this time that she became involved with Near Infrared Spectroscopy. She completed a PhD in ruminant nutrition, specifically using NIR to predict protein fractions in grass and corn silage. In 2000, she left the feed industry and established Pacific Agri Technologies to provide consulting services to the agriculture and aquaculture industries in nutritional consulting, project management and NIR analytical services for forage, feedstuffs and compost. In 2007, Mary Lou accepted a position with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development as Research Scientist for Feed Quality and is currently working on a multi-year project in feedstuff evaluation and NIR development for the Alberta crop and animal industries.
Mary Lou’s presentation is entitled: “The role of NIR in Alberta’s Livestock Feed Initiative
– The Feed Evaluation and Quality Project”.
Dr John Black is a Research Management Consultant. He previously worked as a Chief Research Scientist in the Australian Government research organization, CSIRO, and was Officer-in-Charge of the Prospect laboratory in Sydney. His research specialized in comparative physiology and nutrition across animal species and the development of computer simulation models. John left CSIRO in 1996 to establish a research management company where he now manages research programs for a wide range of rural R&D organizations and private companies. His activities include work for the beef, dairy, pig, poultry, grain, fodder and honeybee industries. He has over 200 scientific publications. His contributions to science and to bushfire safety were recognized by being made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2001.
The title of John’s presentation will be: “The value of NIR to the Australian feed grain industry.”
