Contact
Email: lroman@uva.es
Phone: +34 979108495
Laura Román Rivas
Ramon & Cajal Researcher
Affiliations
- Ramon & Cajal Researcher, Department of Agricultural Engineering, Food Technology Division, University of Valladolid.
Profile
Laura Román Rivas is a Ramón y Cajal researcher (tenure-track) in the Food Technology Area at the University of Valladolid since January 2023. She earned her PhD in Food Engineering in 2018, obtaining the UVa-Extraordinary PhD Award for her thesis "Role of starch gelatinization and fragmentation in extruded flour functionality". During her PhD, she was a visiting student for 7 months at the recognized Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research at Purdue University (USA). She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Engineering of the University of Guelph (Canada) from November 2018 to March 2021, where she continued her research on carbohydrate biochemistry and plant-based food processing through extrusion technology. After her time in Canada, she worked at the department of Food Science of Aarhus University (Denmark) for almost 2 years, thanks to obtaining a prestigious postdoctoral project funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, of which she was also principal investigator. This project allowed broadening the scope of her research to understanding the functionality of plant proteins. In 2021, she won the prestigious L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science research award, as one of the top 3 young women scientists in Denmark. In 2022, she received the internationally recognized Nils Foss Talent Prize 2022 (Foss Analytics, Denmark) as a young research talent in the application of analytical technology to improve the quality of food systems. To date, she has secured more than 995.000 € in competitive funding as principal investigator. She has also worked in research-related projects with the national and international food industry, especially manufacturers of ingredients and foods from cereals and legumes, successfully providing an academic-industry knowledge transfer.
Research Lines
- Structure-function relationships of complex food carbohydrates
- Hydrothermal processing of plant-based biopolymers, including extrusion technology
- Analytical determination of the fine molecular structure of starch and other complex polysaccharides
- Extraction and physicochemical characterization of plant-based proteins
- Physical and enzymatic modification of carbohydrates and plant-based proteins
- Physical properties of plant biopolymers, with a focus on rheological and colloidal properties
- Digestion kinetics of starch polysaccharides
- Oriented design of functional and nutritious plant-based foods, including bakery and extruded products.