Functional Food: Food as Medicine
Dr. Liangli (Lucy) Yu
Professor, Department of Nutrition & Food Science, University of Maryland, USA
Dr. Liangli (Lucy) Yu is a professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland; she also served as a “Zhi-Yuan” chair professor in the School of Agriculture and Biology at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research focuses on food safety chemistry, and the chemistry and biochemistry of nutraceuticals and functional foods. Dr. Yu is a leading food chemist in non-targeted detection of food chemical hazards, food adulteration detection, the chemical mechanisms involved in toxicant formation during food processing, and molecular and cellular food toxicology. In addition, Dr. Yu’s group has contributed significantly to food antioxidant, food oxidation and antioxidation, and nutraceuticals and functional food chemistry.
Dr. Yu is a Fellow of the Institute of Food Technologists and a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, Agricultural and Food Chemistry Division. She received several scholarly awards including the 2006 Young Scientist Award from the American Chemical Society, Agricultural and Food Chemistry Division for her contribution in research and development of nutraceuticals and functional foods, and the 2008 Young Scientist Research Award from the American Oil Chemist Society for her contribution in value-added specialty edible seed oils flours, and 2012 Distinguished Agricultural Aluminum Award from the College of Agriculture, Purdue University. She is a member of the Food Ingredients Expert Committee and the Food Ingredient Intentional Adulterants Expert Panel for the Food Chemical Codex of US Pharmacopeia. She serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, served as the associate editor for the LWT-Food Science and Technology, and Journal of Food Science, and is an editorial board member for Food Chemistry and LWT-Food Science and Technology. Her research has been reported in many news reports worldwide including CNN, ABC, NBC, and BBC.
Dr. Mathew Baker
Professor and Head, Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications, Texas A&M University, USA
Matt Baker is a professor and department head in Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications at Texas A&M University. In Fall 2021, he concurrently served as interim department head in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences. Baker’s research in food health innovations is bifurcated in cognitive and emotional response of consumer messages and international food security. Baker teaches graduate courses in research design and data analysis and has a 50% appointment in Texas AgriLife Research. He was employed as a faculty member at Texas Tech for 19 years where he also served as a dean and department chair. He presently serves on the Internal Scientific Advisory Committee for the newly established Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture. He received a B.S. and M.Ed. from Texas Tech University, and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.
Dr. Min-Hsiung Pan
Professor, Institute of Food Science & Technology, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Prof. Min-Hsiung Pan completed his PhD in 1996-2000 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from College of Medicine, National Taiwan University. Currently he is a Distinguished Professor in Institute of Food Science and Technology, National Taiwan University. The major research focus of my laboratory is to understand the molecular mechanisms responsible for natural dietary compounds on human diseases and carcinogenesis. He has published over 247 journal articles. His current research interests focus on the discovery and development of novel nutraceuticals that can be used in functional foods/dietary supplements to prevent chronic diseases such as cancer, inflammatory condition, epigenetic regulation, liver fibrosis and obesity.
Dr. Tsung-Hsi Wang
Director, Department of Planning Division, National Health Insurance Administration, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taiwan
Prof. Joyce Tsung-Hsi Wang, a gynecologist specializing in healthcare administration and management, healthcare industry development, crisis communication and response, healthcare quality and patient safety, and occupational medicine. She is currently the director of the Planning Division of the NHIA, overseeing the implementation of virtual NHI card and the health-related aspect of the Smart Government. Prior to that, she was the director of Health in Hsinchu City of Taiwan and led the planning, coordination and execution of a wide-range of health policies. She engaged in the COVID prevention and the resilient health care system constructed by her successfully prevent the COVID-19 from spreading in Hsinchu City. From 2018 to 2020, she served as the representative of the Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) in Washington D.C. of the United States and successfully facilitated bilateral health and welfare cooperation. As the first female secretary general of the MOHW from 2016 to 2018, she supervised and oversaw important national policies.
Dr. Tai-Yuan Chen
Associate Professor, Department of Food Science, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan
Dr. Tai-Yuan Chen received his Ph. D. degree from National Taiwan Ocean University (NTOU) in 2004. Dr. Chen has severed as Secretary-general in the Taiwan Proteomics Society, and Deputy Secretary in the Health Food Society of Taiwan, and Deputy Chairman in the Department of Food Science (NTOU). He is currently an associate Professor, major in the proteomics studies on food security and food processing, especially for electrolyzed water sanitation and high pressure processing (HPP). His research interests also discuss antioxidant biofunctions of natural products as herbal teas and bioactive peptides. His team recently tried to create the circular economy by putting into practical uses of food industrial biowastes or co-products such as banana peel and tilapia skin.
