Professor Bart Nicolaï

   Bart Nicolaï has MSc degrees in Agricultural Engineering (Ghent University, Belgium) and Applied Mathematics (University of Leuven, Belgium). He obtained a PhD in Applied Biological Sciences in 1994 at the University of Leuven (Belgium) where he now is a full professor. He is also director of the Flanders Centre of Postharvest Technology, a public-private partnership which was established by the University of Leuven and the Association of Belgian Horticultural Co-operatives in 1997. Since 2005 he is head of the division Mechatronics, Biostatistics and Sensors (MeBioS) of the Biosystems department at the University of Leuven and also leads the Postharvest Group of this division. His main research interests are postharvest biology and technology, refrigeration technology, heat and mass transfer, quality of fruit and vegetables, and mathematical modelling. Bart Nicolaï is past-chairman of the Special Interest Group on Postharvest Processing of the European Association of Agricultural Engineers (EurAgEng), and past president of Commission C2 (Food Science and Engineering) of the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR-IIF). He has been a member of the organizing and/or scientific committees of many international workshops and symposia and is often invited as a keynote speaker on major postharvest conferences, including two Gordon conferences. He is on the editorial board of the journal Journal of Food Engineering and Postharvest Innovation and Technology, and editor-in-chief of the journal Postharvest Biology and Technology. He has coordinated 8 EU research projects and has participated in several others and he has published more than 300 peer reviewed international scientific journals with the number of citations of 6602 and h-index of 47.