Meet the SCFDI Team

Head of SCFDI

Catriona heads up the team at the SCFDI, with a background spanning 25+ years in the food industry in companies such as Campbell Soup, Dairy Crest, Diet Chef and Glanbia Performance Nutrition.  Her specialisms are new product development, reformulation, ingredient functionality and applications. Catriona is currently co-leading an Innovate UK project on palm oil replacement for the food industry. 

Sensory Technologist

Following on from her BSc in Nutrition at Queen Margaret University, Sarah proceeded to an MSc in Food Technology – Quality Assurance at the University of Reading. She now leads all consumer and sensory projects at the SCFDI and has an intermediate IFST qualification in sensory evaluation. She has a keen interest in intra- and inter-individual differences in taste and aroma perception, product trends and consumer behaviour

Food Technologist

A QMU Nutrition and Food Science graduate, Caitlin has a keen interest in new product development and reformulation. She enjoys the challenge of being given a novel product brief that can allow her to use her food science knowledge.

Food Product Development Technologist

Caroline has spent her whole career in the food industry, from recipe writing and photography styling for Sharwood’s oriental range to trialling salting and maturation procedures for smoked salmon across a number of Scottish manufacturing sites; moving into product & project management for 2 Sisters &  Bakkavor covering Products such as Gastro Ready Meals, Party Food and Food to Go Salads and range “refresh” involving managing recipe development, ingredient sourcing and  sustainable packaging solutions for retail customers. Latterly with a vegan on-line retailer overseeing the innovation pipeline for Own Label Vegan and Directional artisan foods, with a range of suppliers across the UK.

Caroline recently undertook the module TM188 Fundraising, Finance and Development at QMU and has interest in fundraising methodologies for small artisan food companies.

Reader in Food Science

Julien is a lecturer in food science and a researcher at the SCFDI. His work focuses on the development of novel functional ingredients with combined health and sustainability benefits, with a particular focus on fat replacement, salt reduction and optimisation of industry co-products. Julien leads current Innovate UK-funded PALM-ALT project (2020-2022) on palm fat replacement and has contributed as research co-investigator to a number of other large grants.