Olga received the EFFoST Lifetime Achievement Award 2023 in recognition of her outstanding leadership, vision, and pioneering efforts in research on development of safe and healthy new food products through the application of new techniques.
About Olga Martín-Belloso
Prof. Olga Martín-Belloso pursued chemical sciences at the University of Zaragoza, earning her bachelor's degree in 1982 and completing her PhD in 1991 at the same institution, where she conducted her research at the National Technical Center of Canned Vegetables in San Adrián.
She has been a professor at the University of Lleida since 1992. Her research interests are focussed on the development of ready-to-eat, safe and healthy products by combining the already existing processing technologies with novel techniques as well as understanding the mechanisms and kinetics underpinning the impact of novel technologies on food safety, quality and health related compounds as a basis for process and product development. Non thermal technologies including pulsed electric fields, intense pulse light, ultrasounds and cold plasma are key technologies developed by her research group. The valorization of by-products from fruits and vegetables processing has been another area of great interest with three issued patents. A special emphasis has been done on the use of edible coatings with different purposes in diverse kind of food. A reduction of particle size until the nanoscale has been also explored to improve the dispersion of immiscible particles to be carried in edible coating applied in fresh-cut fruits among other applications in foods.
She has authored more than 350 research papers, several books, book chapters and patents. In addition, she has been invited as speaker in numerous international meetings and courses. Prof Martín-Belloso belongs to the editorial board of recognized Journals and is currently associate editor of the Food Engineering and Physical Properties Section of Journal of Food Science and editor of Food Engineering Reviews.
In 2003 she was invited to be a member of the EFFoST Working group on Public, Scientific and Legal Acceptance of New Food Technology and joined the EFFoST Executive Committee in 2004. In 2015, she had been elected as fellow to the Institute of Food Technology of the United States (IFT), and became the first Spanish woman to be academy fellow of the International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) in 2016. In 2018 the Catalan Government awarded her the Narcís Monturiol Medal, in recognition of her contribution to the development of science and technology.