International PhD in
Food Engineering and Biotechnology
A public competition for the allocation of PhD positions in Food Engineering and Biotechnology is open for
- 16 places is announced, of which 14 will be covered by grants and 2 without grant.
Programme content
The PhD on Food Engineering and Biotechnology is a full-time programme. The PhD thesis has to be written in English and accompanied by German and Italian abstracts
PhD students should benefit from the special multilingual opportunities offered by the University, which include activities/events in Italian, German or other languages (e.g., seminars, optional courses, social events). The PhD programme comprises lectures and research activities that can be completed both at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and at universities abroad. The time spent abroad can be at one of the foreign universities where foreign members of the PhD Course Committee are coming from or at other universities or research centres.
Research areas
The following research areas, including sub-headings, are considered:
Primary food production
This issue mainly concerns those foods that are not subjected to technology processing, and their relationships with the agriculture and environmental features. The main goal is to focus on natural, sustainable and high performing processes and products. Non-restrictive examples of related research areas are as follows.
Renewable technologies and sensors in agriculture engineering;
precision agriculture;
identification of microbial and plant metabolic markers in response environmental stresses and nutritional supply;
thermos-conversion of agriculture and food by products for the production of chemical compounds.
Set-up, management and validation of food processes
This issue mainly concerns food processing, with particular emphasis to the set up, and consequent management and validation, of novel processes for the manufacture of products with very high quality sensory, rheology, hygiene and nutritional attributes. Non-restrictive examples of related research areas are as follows.
Optimization of structure, aroma and hygiene food attributes;
Point of care diagnostic for food traceability, quality assessment and smart packaging;
application of non-thermal technologies and rapid methods (e.g., electrochemical biosensors);
sensors and management tools for predictive maintenance applications in agrifood industries;
food microstructure engineering; biotechnology production of natural foods through the gene and enzyme conditioning; conditioning of the chemical changes of food compounds with high nutritional value; design and evaluation of onfarm drying processes for delicate vegetable products.
Application of the omics techniques
This issue mainly concerns the application of food omics platforms (meta genomics, proteomics and/or metabolomics) for conditioning and characterizing food processing and products, with
particular emphasis towards fermented foods.
Omics platforms will deserve an interest also to characterize the food-human axis, aiming at strengthening the role of the gut microbiome.
Non restrictive examples of related research areas are as follows:
Functional characterization of foods and related microbiota for the manufacture of fermented foods;
set-up of microbial food processes for improving the nutritional and functional attributes;
characterization and use of chemical nutrients that affect the response by the human gastrointestinal microbiome, exploitation of the ability to work both independently and in a team.cl below
Duration: 3 years
Official teaching language: English
Further information about the PhD programme can be found
here.
The
application should be submitted
here not later than
30th June 2021 (12:00 midday, GMT +2.00)
Contact person:
Karin Felderer
Franz-Innerhofer-Platz 8
I-39100 Bozen
Tel. +39-0471-012805
phd@unibz.it