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Qian Yang

Assistant Professor in Sensory and Consumer Sciences, Faculty of Science

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Biography

Dr Qian Yang is an Assistant Professor in Sensory and Consumer Sciences at the Division of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics. Dr. Yang has over 13 years of experience in conducting research and teaching in sensory and consumer science and collaborating closely with industries. Dr Yang's research interests include:

  • Investigating individual variation in sensory perception. E.g. supertasters, thermal tasters and sweet likers, how these taste phenotypes influence food consumption behaviour.
  • Sweet sensing mechanism: understanding sweet sensing mechanism and its implication on personalised product development for food industries and it's implication for public health (e.g. diabetes).
  • Understanding consumer motivations and barriers to sustainable food choices, to aid a transition towards a more sustainable food choice.
  • Development of a new validated consumer response collection method by bringing relevant context to consumer testing via Virtual Reality to improve the ecological validity of sensory testing.

Dr. Yang is also very interested in large-scale global studies looking at taste perception, food preferences and consumer opinions on sustainable food products.

Teaching Summary

Qian teaches sensory and consumer science for Food Science programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. At undergraduate level, she the co-Module Convener with Dr. Rebecca For for… read more

Research Summary

Current PhD students' research include:

  • Connecting consumers with their food via innovative virtual experiences
  • Understanding consumer emotional response to different protein alternatives
  • Exploring the association between temperature and sweetness perception
  • Communicating sustainability with consumers through digital tools
  • Understanding sensory properties and consumer opinion on edible insects

Recent Publications

Qian teaches sensory and consumer science for Food Science programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. At undergraduate level, she the co-Module Convener with Dr. Rebecca For for Sensory Evaluation (BIOS2015) and Consumer Science (BIOS3113) modules. At postgraduate level, she contributes to teaching for both MSc in Food Production Management and Brewing Science.

Qian has obtained Post-graduate certificate in Higher Education in 2022. She has an interest in creating interactive learning experiences to enable active learning.

Qian has also extensive experiences delivering besopken training courses for industry delegates.

Past Research

Past PhD students' research include:

  • Understanding consumer opinions on sustainability in food
  • Cross-cultural differences in taste: the effect of individual variation on consumers' perceptual, hedonic and emotional responses
  • Measuring emotional response to sensory attributes: Context effects
  • Developing an understanding and improved sensory quality of low alcohol beer
  • Investigating the contribution of hop components to the perception of beer flavour
  • Understanding consumer sensory perception of beer and wine body

Future Research

Future research include:

  • Identifying the mechanisms of gut-brain axis to sweet sensing with type 2 diabetes (funded by Diabetes UK)

School of Biosciences

University of Nottingham
Sutton Bonington Campus
Nr Loughborough
LE12 5RD, UK

For all enquiries please visit:
www.nottingham.ac.uk/enquire

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