Adrian Feiler

Bundesverband Aquakultur e.V. (Germany)

From the early days, Adrian has dedicated his life to fish and aquaculture. This passion has led him to focus on aquatic topics during his Bachelor and Master degree at TU München. From that educational side, he started his career at Kaeser Kompressoren, where he works as the business development manager in the sector of aquaculture.

Adrian Feiler has been a Board member of the Bundesverband Aquakultur e.V. since 2022. In 2023 he was elected as new President of Bundesverband Aquakultur e.V.

Tom Zöllner

FarmTech Society (Belgium)

Tom Zoellner is a proven expert for innovative agri-tech initiatives and has 25 years’ experience in agricultural consulting as well as in being in the forefront with innovation and resilience solutions in the agriculture community. Tom helped initiate and develop numerous major international projects for acclaimed agriculture innovation showcases in the US, CH, DE and the Benelux and has a MSc. in environmental policy from the Bard Graduate Center for Sustainablity, New York.

He is the co-founder and the secretary-general of the FarmTech Society based in Brussels with many years being part of the agriculture expert networks and policy development working groups in the US and the EU.

Jasmin Dold

BayWa AG (Germany)

Ms Dold studied food technology and completed her Master's degree at TUM in Freising in 2015.

From 2016-2018, she worked as a research assistant at a small research company (inventfood, Bad Tölz), where she characterised plant proteins with regard to their functional properties (extraction behaviour, aggregation behaviour, etc.).

From 2019-2022 she worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Food Packaging Technology / Chair of Brewing and Beverage Technology at TUM in Freising in the field of optical detection of protective gases in MAP packaging

Since June 2022, she has been working as a project manager in the newly created business unit of BayWa AG, New Protein Solutions in Munich. Here she is mainly involved in developing customer-centric ingredient solutions from regional raw materials and specialities. In the area of BayWa venture activities, she is responsible for the technological evaluation of potential start-up investments and the operational support of the existing start-up portfolio.

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Prof. Dr. Tilo Hühn

ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland)

Prof. Dr. Tilo Hühn, Food Architect, Doctor of Biology, holds an engineering degree in Viticulture and Oenology. His research focuses on regenerative process engineering, analytical science and technology of aroma components, bioactive substances and value-determining ingredients. Together with his team and in collaboration with other stakeholders he creates, varies, expands, and reproduces the information pathways to explore functional solutions for the food world. In cooperation with industrial partner’s, new solutions for extraction of more good ingredients from grapes, apples, oranges, olives, tomatoes, spices, herbs, coffee, insects, nuts, cocoa and plant cell cultures were created. Since 1997 he has been working at the Zurich University for Applied Sciences in Waedenswil, Switzerland and is Head of the Centre for Food Composition and Process Design.

Christopher Nigischer

consider it GmbH (Germany)

Christopher Nigischer has been an entrepreneur for over 13 years. His first company - consider it GmbH - was bootstrapped and today employs 40 people. This was followed by STOKR GmbH, funded by Venture Capital, and CHAINSTEP GmbH as well as Blockchain Research Lab gGmbH, funded mainly by public funding.

Christopher realized early on that public funding and grants were his preferred form of financing. Accordingly, Christopher has been using this tool for his own ventures and helping his clients use it for the past 10 years.

Supported by a team of experienced grant consultants he has now helped more than 100 organizations, primarily technology startups, to raise funding. He also shares his knowledge and experience openly on Linkedin, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok as the "Funding Whisperer."

Dr. Stefan Pecoroni

GEA Westfalia Separator Group GmbH (Germany)

Dr. Stefan Pecoroni studied and obtained his doctorate in food technology at the University of Hohenheim. Since 1995 he has been working for GEA Group in various sales and development functions, including as head of the business lines beverage technology and renewable raw materials. Since 2020, Dr. Pecoroni has been Head of Process Technology & Innovation and Vice President of GEA Westfalia Separator Group GmbH, focusing on: process technology development and support and innovation management.

Prof. Dr. Katharina Riehn

Hamburg University of Applied Sciences Hamburg (Germany)

Prof. Dr. Katharina Riehn is a specialist veterinarian for food safety and meat hygiene. She completed her studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and received her doctorate at the Institute for Food Hygiene. Since 2012, she has been a professor of food microbiology and toxicology in the Department of Ecotrophology at the Faculty of Life Sciences at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. Her research focuses on animal welfare aspects in the field of slaughter and food-associated parasitic zoonoses. Another research focus is on the identification of quality parameters in cocoa and mangoes. In November 2014, she additionally completed the training to become a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Public Health (ECVPH) in the field of "Food Science".