Dr Pierre Dardenne (kindly sponsored by Foss Pacific) graduated as an agronomy engineer from Gembloux Agricultural University, Belgium and since 1980 has worked for the Agricultural Research Centre of Gembloux (CRAGx) to lead NIR research. In 1991, he obtained his PhD in Agronomical Sciences at Gembloux Agricultural University in the field of spectroscopy and chemometrics. Since then, Pierre has developed many NIR applications and continues his involvement in many European and world-wide research programmes.  Pierre currently heads the Quality Department of the Agricultural Research Centre and continues to manage the section entitled "Application of the physical methods of non destructive analyses for the global management of the quality of the primary and transformed products: development of software and management of networks".  He leads other groups of scientists working on feed and food chemical composition, contaminants (heavy metals, antibiotics), milk microbiology and GMO detection.  Authenticity, anti-fraud and food safety are key words in many research programmes of his department.  Pierre was co-organiser of the 3rd ICNIRS conference in Brussels in 1990, and is currently Chairman-Elect of ICNIRS.  He won the Tomas Hirschfeld Award in 2002 and was a guest of ANISG in 1997.  On this occasion, Pierre will speak on NIR calibration strategies, transfer and networking as well as some of the many NIR applications in which he is involved.

Dr Paolo Berzaghi was born in Italy and raised on the family dairy farm.  He obtained his B. Agric. Sci. from the University of Padua in 1988 and in 1991 undertook a Masters program in dairy nutrition at Virginia Tech, USA.  He began working at the University of Padua in 1993 as research assistant in the Animal Science Department.  In 1997-98 he was a Fulbright Scholar, and spent 4 months working with Dr John Shenk at Infrasoft International and Pennsylvania State University.  From 2000 to 2002 Paolo was a visiting scientist at the University of Wisconsin and USDA-ARS, Madison, USA.  He has been an Associate Professor in Animal Science since 2002.  Paolo has a major interest in NIR, especially in forage analysis, and his Italian group develops and maintains calibrations for fresh undried, unground forages in a small network across 5 European countries using Foss and Zeiss Corona instruments.  He is also currently the technical manager of the US NIRS Consortium, developing calibration and standardization for over 25 forage laboratories located across the USA.  Paolo’s current interests are in developing solutions for the use of NIR on farms.  In 2005 he patented a system for grain analysis on combines, and in 2007 he started a University spin-off company to produce and install NIT systems on commercial combines.  Paolo’s presentation at this conference will be entitled “NIR on the go; where is it going?”

Dr Steve Holroyd has worked for the Fonterra company, New Zealand, since 1998 and is currently analytical development manager.  He is responsible for identification, development and implementation of rapid analytical methods for analysis of milk and milk products.  Steve previously worked in the oil industry in the UK, and since 1992 has been involved in the development of mid and near infrared spectroscopy for quantitative and qualitative analysis.  The title of Steve’s presentation is “Where’s the cheese? Evolution of instrumentation, sampling and calibration for cheese analysis by NIR”.

Dr Frank Westad received his M.Sc in chemistry and data analysis in 1988, and completed his Ph.D thesis “Relevance and parsimony in multivariate modelling” in 2000 with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.  His working experience over the years has included positions as Research Scientist with SINTEF, Consultant with IDT GmbH (Germany), Application Specialist with CAMO and Senior Research Scientist at GE Healthcare and the Norwegian Food Research Institute (MATFORSK).  His experiences in NIR spectroscopy are mainly in food, feed, pharmaceuticals and pulp & paper.  He has published numerous papers, and frequently gives presentations at international conferences.  While employed at CAMO and MATFORSK, a lot of his time was dedicated to teaching statistics/chemometrics to the industry.  He now has his own consulting company and a position as Manager of Mathematical Modelling at ABBON (Norway).  Frank’s invited paper is entitled “Multivariate regression models in NIR applications: a discussion on interpretation, variable selection and external validation”.

As well as our invited speakers, we are expecting that at least three other prominent international NIR scientists will attend our conference.

Some people had thought that the NIR legend and software pioneer, Dr John Shenk, had retired.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  We are delighted that John will be with us in Hamilton, courtesy of Unity Scientific.  We await with anticipation John’s latest thoughts on the direction of NIR technology and software, in a presentation tentatively entitled “Surprises!”

Dr Sumio Kawano and Dr Sirinnapa Saranwong (“Mui”), from the National Food Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan, must have enjoyed the last ANISG conference in Rockhampton so much that they are returning for the 2008 conference!  They will both present papers, and Mui will also give us an update on plans for the next ICNIRS Conference (NIR-2009), to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, in November 2009.