Research themes
Sustainable food processing: Dr Jo Gould and her team explore ways of incorporating sustainable sources of protein into food microstructures, by understanding the relationship between processing, functionality and safety of ingredients. Read more about this work here.
Natural multicomponent ingredients and nutrients: Professor David Gray's team research novel, bio-innovative approaches of incorporating lipid-rich organelles (oleosomes and chloroplasts) into the diet to improve health, and to reduce the impact on the environment. Read more about this work here.
Soft matter biomaterials and biointerfaces: our research group focuses on rheology, lubrication, material science and biointerfaces.
Microstructure design and engineering: Dr Vincenzo di Bari's research focuses on understanding the self- and engineered assembly of established, emerging and underutilised biomaterials to enable microstructure design and manufacture of ingredients and food products.
Research facilities and expertise
The Food and Biomaterials Group is leading innovation in:
- Food formulation and processing through increased understanding of the material properties of ingredients, their interplay, and the microstructure of foods
- Mechanisms underpinning oral processing and providing applied approaches for analysing the structure-oral processing-sensory perception links.
- Ingredient analysis, identification, structuring, and probing molecular and microstructural interactions.
- Instrumental characterisation techniques to enable multi-scale analysis of materials, including during dynamic processing.
Our extensive research facilities and material characterisation capabilities enable us to achieve detailed multi-scale analysis of foods and biomaterials, from molecules to the macro-scale, and to validate new manufacturing approaches in our pilot-plant facilities.
Contact Us
Get in touch with us via the email links above to talk about our research and potential collaborations. To find out more about how we work with business, please contact Mita Lad, Senior Executive in our Corporate Partnerships team - mita.lad@nottingham.ac.uk
Research leaders
Our team encompasses 40 researchers working across four key themes, each led by an experienced academic:
Dr Jo Gould completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Nottingham, before becoming an Assistant Professor in the Food, Nutrition and Dietetics team in 2017.
joanne.gould@nottingham.ac.uk
orcid.org/0000-0002-7702-9771
Professor David Gray completed a PhD in plant lipid biochemistry at the University of Birmingham before joining Nottingham in 1993. He plays a key role in both teaching and research work at the University.
david.gray@nottingham.ac.uk
orcid.org/0000-0001-7621-3473
Dr Vincenzo Di Bari joined the University of Nottingham in 2014 after a PhD at the School of Chemical Engineering in Birmingham. He was appointed a Assistant Professor in Food Structure in 2021.
vincenzo.dibari@nottingham.ac.uk
orcid.org/0000-0001-9333-9764
Recent Papers
Read about our latest research in these recent publications:
Effect of steam sterilisation on lipophilic nutrient stability in a chloroplast-rich fraction (CRF) recovered from postharvest, pea vine field residue (haulm) - 2021 - Wattanakul, J. et al, Food Chemistry, 334, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2020.127589
Wood hemicelluloses exert distinct biomechanical contributions to cellulose fibrillar networks - 2020 - Berglund, J. et al, Nature Communications 11 (4692), https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18390-z
Structural Insights into the Mechanism of Heat‐Set Gel Formation of Polyisocyanopeptide Polymers - 2020- Gavrilov, M. et al, Macromolecular Rapid Communications https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/marc.20
2070041
Assessment of rapeseed oil body (oleosome) lipolytic activity as an effective predictor of emulsion purity and stability - 2020 - De Chirico, S. et al, Food Chemistry, 316, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2020.126355
The digestion of galactolipids and its ubiquitous function in Nature for the uptake of the essential α-linolenic acid - 2020 - Sahaka, M. et al, Food and Function 11 (8) 6710-6744
https://doi.org/10.1039/d0fo01040e