PhD Student: Lorenzo Estivi (ORCID n. 0000-0002-0956-2769)
Supervisor: Prof. Alyssa Hidalgo, DeFENS
Dean: Prof. Diego Mora
Research area: Food Science and Nutrition
PhD title achieved on: 26th March 2024
Research topic
Role of macromolecules in designing and optimizing processes for biofunctional-enriched foods
Project Synopsis
Cereals and pulses supply most of our daily energy requirement and also health-enhancing compounds: thus, small variations in their composition have positive effect on human health.
This project aims to improve the nutritional value of foods from cereals and pulses by exploiting their biodiversity, modifying seeds composition by natural treatments (e.g. germination), recovering and upcycling food industry by-products. These aims will be combined with high-efficiency technologies (e.g. high-power low-frequency ultrasound) to reduce energetic and environmental processing costs.
The main goals will be:
1) study the potential of underutilised crops for industrial food production
2) assess the ability of germination at improving seeds composition
3) develop tailored ultrasound treatments to increase bioactive compounds content in foods and/or to improve the recovery of valuable components from by-products with efficient energy and water utilisation.
A multidisciplinary approach will analyse US-treated materials and derived foods. Our results will support US utilisation at industrial scale.
Project keywords
Ultrasound technology, cereals, legumes, functional food
Contacts
Università degli Studi di Milano
Department of Food, Environmental and Nutritional Sciences, DeFENS
Via Celoria 2, 20133, Milano
lorenzo.estivi@unimi.it
Collaborations
Dr. Andrea Brandolini, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA)
Prof. Luis Condezo-Hoyos, Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, Lima, Perú
Sponsor
Fellowship sponsor: Università degli Studi di Milano
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