Feeding the Future
Technion’s Ingenious Approach to Sustainable Food Tech
Featuring Professors Marcelle Machluf, Ester Segal,
and Uri Lesmes
The world’s food system is reaching a crisis point: waste, overfishing, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions from farming, and more are destroying the planet. As the global population keeps growing, food security is fast becoming one of the major challenges facing humanity.
Feeding the world today and tomorrow in an effective and sustainable manner is no small feat. It requires creativity and ingenuity to be coupled with state-of-the-art infrastructure and top engineering and scientific know-how. It requires the Technion.
Hear directly from experts from the new Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center about the Technion’s cutting-edge approach to tackling food insecurity. Professor Marcelle Machluf will share plans for this first-of-a-kind center in Israel, one of the only faculties in the world combining bioengineering, technology, life sciences, and food sciences to address global food challenges. She will be joined by her colleagues, Professor Ester Segal, head of the Laboratory of Multifunctional Nanomaterials, and Professor Uri Lesmes, who heads both the Technion Lab of Food Chemistry & Bioactives and the Food and Health Innovation Center.
Featured Speakers
Professor Marcelle Machluf is dean of the Technion Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, and head of the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center. Her food tech research harnesses biological and engineering expertise to identify and implement safe and effective solutions that benefit humankind, including a novel technology based on micro-scale cellular building blocks for producing diverse cuts of clean meat products.
Prof. Machluf is also renowned for her cutting-edge NanoGhosts cancer and drug delivery research, and her work in tissue regeneration. She is head of the Technion’s graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Biotechnology, a member of the Affiliate Engineering Faculty of the Rappaport Technion Integrated Cancer Center, and former deputy executive vice president for research for the Technion’s Pre-Clinical Research Authority. She also works closely with the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute. Her work has been cited more than 2,800 times. She has six national patents and two approved international patents in the fields of drug delivery and tissue engineering.
Professor Ester Segal heads the Laboratory of Multifunctional Nanomaterials in the Technion Faculty Biotechnology and Food Engineering and serves as the University’s deputy executive vice president for research. Her research is in the field of nano-biotechnology, interfacing nanomaterials science and biotechnology. With her unique experience in polymer science and biotechnology, Prof. Segal is involved in applicative research and industrial collaborations related to bio-functional polymer nanocomposites, such as antimicrobial surfaces. She has initiated and coordinated the EU-H2020 NanoPack Consortium, which raised $8.7 million for developing antimicrobial packaging for extending food shelf life and reducing food waste.
Professor Uri Lesmes ’04, Ph.D. ’08 heads the Technion Lab of Food Chemistry & Bioactives and the Food and Health Innovation Center, which supports R&D in Israel’s food industry. He also is the academic leader of Israel’s pan-European accelerator network, aimed at promoting food entrepreneurs and startups. Concerned with healthy, affordable, and eco-friendly food choices, Prof. Lesmes works on the rational design of foods, personalized food solutions, and the safety of food additives. One such project is the EU-funded project EAT4AGE, which seeks to develop palatable, easily digestible nutrient-dense foods tailored to the needs of the aging population.
