Speakers

Prof. dr Maria Barbosa is Professor in Bioprocess Engineering and is Director of AlgaePARC (www.AlgaePARC.com) at Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands. She has served as president of the Dutch Biotechnology Association (NBV) and is a member of the steering group of the European Algae Biomass Association (EABA). 

She holds a Ph.D. in Bioprocess Engineering obtained at Wageningen University.  She has worked at ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland, IBET (Institute of Experimental Biology and Technology), Portugal and at EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation), Germany.

She presently leads the group on microalgal biotechnology and coordinates several large research programs covering the entire microalgae production chain.

Her scientific interests are in microalgae strain improvement, process design and scale-up.

Vincent is Senior Adviser for Ocean at United Nations Global Compact. Following 20 years working in Food industry and then for Foundation, Vincent led in 2020 the “Seaweed Manifesto”  and in 2024 the plankton Manifesto in a call to advance science on low tropic ocean ecosystems to support addressing the triple planetary crises. 

In 2021, he founded theGlobal Seaweed Coalition (1st global platform of seaweed stakeholders, 2 000 + members worldwide). In 2023, Vincent released “The Seaweed Revolution”, now a reference book on seaweed, awarded best environmental book of the year and translated in many languages.

In 2025, he released a comic and a children book on seaweed and a second book “The Power of the Plankton” (release in english next may).

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alexander Mathys is a food technologist and Professor (Tenured in 2022) in Sustainable Food Processing at ETH Zurich, Switzerland and is Principal Investigator at the Singapore-ETH Centre and Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein at the National University of Singapore NUS.

He is focusing on more efficiency and sustainability of value chains in food and feed. His current research focuses on material and energetic utilization of plant based side streams, micro process engineering and extrusion for tailored structure formation and synthesis, innovative multi hurdle technologies for gentle preservation of healthy and high quality food, novel protein sources from microalgae and insects to improve food security as well as multi indicator sustainability assessment as basic analysis in food processing. Dr . Mathys is the author of more than 200 publications and he has won several prestigious research awards e.g. from the ETH Zurich, the International Union of Food Science and Technology ((IUFoST) and the International Congress on Engineering and Food (ICEF).

Furthermore Dr. Mathys is selected International Academy of Food Science and Technology (IAFoST) Fellow since 2024 and he is e.g. the ETH Zurich Dandelion Entrepreneurship Special Award Winner 2022 and the IFT International Food Security Award Winner 2020.

Julie Zedler is a Junior Professor for Synthetic Biology in Photosynthetic Organisms at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany). 

She studied Biological Sciences at the University of Konstanz and obtained her PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Kent (UK) in 2016. After 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen, she started her own research group in 2019. She has over 10 years of experience in genetic engineering and application-oriented research in algae and was actively involved in previous editions of the YAS.

Currently, her work focuses on understanding and tailoring spatial organisation of enzyme and product biosynthesis in cyanobacteria using a Synthetic Biology approach.

Dr. Susan Løvstad Holdt is Associate Professor at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, where she works at the interface of science, industry, and regulation within the seaweed sector. Her research focuses on the use of seaweed and algae as food ingredients, including processing, safety, and bioactive compounds, with particular expertise in iodine and regulatory challenges.

She serves as Vice President of the International Seaweed Association and is deeply involved in European standardisation work on algae products. Through her work, she contributes to shaping the scientific and regulatory foundation needed to support the sustainable growth of the seaweed industry in Europe.