Sustainable Valorization of Date Palm By-products and Wastes

Sajid Maqsood is a Professor at the Department of Food Science - College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, UAEU. His research is dedicated and aligned exclusively with the UAE's food and nutritional needs. He has established an innovative research program at the UAEU that focuses on bioactive molecules in camel milk and dates. Additionally, he is working on a circular economy of food wastes and by-products generated during the UAE's agricultural practices and food processing phases. He is also working food wastes and by-products valorization generated at farm and industry level in UAE and utilization into food fortification, and biodegradable packaging . He has done intensive research on alternative proteins (plant-based proteins, meat analogues etc) and sustainable means of food processing. He has recently started integrating AI and ML in his research, with the intent to make food processing and product development sustainable. He is leading an active research group in Food Science Department of UAE University with multidisciplinary collaboration within UAE and abroad. He has published more than 200 publications in highly reputed journals (mostly Q1 ranked) and was listed amongst the top 2% ranked highly cited scientists by Stanford University based study.

Ume Roobab is a Research Associate in the Department of Food Science, College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, United Arab Emirates University, UAE. She is an experienced researcher in nonthermal technologies for clean label food processing and valorizing agricultural byproducts and waste in a sustainable manner. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and has authored several chapters for scholarly books. She is an active member of the Volunteer Reviewer Board ‎for MDPI, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, Springer, and Elsevier journals.

Rana Muhammad Aadil is an Associate Professor at University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, a top-ranking university in Pakistan. His current research focuses on nonthermal processing methods for fruits and vegetables (sonication, thermosonication, pulsed electric field, and high-pressure processing). He is also ‎working on the waste utilization of different fruits and ‎ vegetable fruits by products. During his career, he published more than 300 articles and chapters in journals with high impact factors. He is an associate editor of Measurement: Food and Editorial Board Member of Food Chemistry, Food Chemistry: X, and Legume Sciences.