About us

The Core Science Resources comprises a long-term staff complement, along with a varying number of visiting workers, PhD and short-term students.

Kate Kemsley (Head of Group)

Kate Kemsley read Physics at Magdalen College, Oxford. After graduating, she worked for some years as a Patent Examiner at the European Patent Office before returning to the UK and to academia.

Her PhD and early career was in applied molecular spectroscopy (infrared, Raman) and the design of novel sensors. Subsequently she began to focus on quantitation using spectral data, and the emerging discipline of chemometrics – a branch of statistics particularly useful for handling the large datasets produced by modern analytical techniques. Applications of these methods have included a range of food authentication issues – detection of adulteration in edible oils; processed fruits; meat products; coffee.

The arrival of ‘omics and other big data technologies in recent years has opened up new opportunities for the chemometrics specialist. Kate’s interests have expanded to include the application of multivariate statistics to many more high-dimensional data types. These include a wide range of spectral data types, especially those used in connection with metabolomics (NMR, GC-, LC-MS) and electrophoresis image data. She also has a long-standing interest in electromyography and the processing of digital waveforms. Most recently, her research has concentrated on treatments of data collected using low-field NMR spectroscopy.

Kate is author or co-author of >80 peer-reviewed articles, as well as numerous conference proceedings, posters, book chapters and a textbook. She holds a Professorship (Hon.) in the School of Chemistry at the University of East Anglia.

Grants won: Kate has been Principal Investigator on grants awarded by many different funding bodies (see below), including BBSRC, UKRC, MAFF, DEFRA-LINK and InnovateUK (TSB). She also works with industry via confidential consultancies – these can be arranged through QIB Extra Ltd.

EU Framework 7 (2016 – 2018) Consumer and brand protection in complex foods from protein signatures using mass spectrometry
Industry confidential (2017 – ongoing) Pattern recognition of spectral data
NRP Translational Fund (2015 – 2016) Development of prototype infrared sensors for predicting dormancy breaking in potato tubers
EPSRC Standard Grant (2015 – 2018) Collective of transform ensembles for time-series classification
Walsh Fellowship (2014 – 2018) Non-destructive assessment of quality in fresh produce
TSB-Spark (2013) Development of FTIR postharvest screening to discriminate between fresh and stored potatoes
Technology Strategy Board (2012 – 2015) Data processing methods for automated nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analysis
EU Marie Curie Studentship (2009 – 2010) High-throughput analysis of metabolic data in plant systems
BBSRC (2005 – 2008) Bioinformatics tools and systems development
DEFRA-LINK (2002 – 2006) Towards improved fermentation consistency using multivariate analysis of process parameters
UK Research Councils (2004 – 2005) NIR tomography for internal imaging of chemical composition – a feasibility study on plant tissues
Faraday Fast-track (2003) NIR tomography equipment grant
Industry confidential (2002 – 2003) Fruit quality measurement
Natural Resources Institute (2000 – 2001) Gas sensors for authenticating basmati rice
MAFF (1998) A critical study to develop sampling plans for mycotoxins in cereals and cereal-derived commodities
MAFF (1995 – 1998) Establishment of guidelines for the application of chemometric methods to food authenticity problems

Marianne Defernez (Senior Research Scientist)

Marianne Defernez obtained a science degree (chemistry, mathematics, physics, biology) from the University of Nantes, France in 1991. She then studied for an MsC in analytical chemistry in 1992, which she carried out at IFR. This was followed by a PhD on food authenticity using infrared spectroscopy and chemometric techniques (UEA, 1996). During her studies she became particularly interested in the use of multivariate methods to handle spectral data, and subsequently worked on several projects revolving around the use of infrared and NMR combined with multivariate data analysis techniques, for research on the composition of food and plant materials. This naturally led to her subsequent specialisation in multivariate statistics, particularly within the context of the emerging ‘metabolomics’ field, in ~2000. She has maintained this interest, but has also broadened her experience since then, both in terms of applications and types of data. She uses her knowledge of multivariate statistics, computing and programming skills (primarily Matlab and R) to deal more generally with the handling of complex data in multidisciplinary collaborative research projects. [View publications on Google Scholar]

Nikolaus Wellner (Senior Research Scientist)

George Savva (Senior Research Scientist)

Mark Philo (Research Scientist)

I have 21 years experience in food science research. I spent 12 years at the Central Science Laboratory analysing organic contaminants in foods from packaging migration such as phthalate esters and acrylamide. I spent another 4 years at Cefas where I monitored the marine environments for organotins and brominated flame retardants. I also developed methods for the analysis of PAH metabolites in crustacean urine and fish bile and the analysis of paralytic shellfish poisoning in shellfish. Since arriving at IFR, I am responsible for the mass spectrometry facilities in the metabolomics group. I am involved in the team metabolomic projects, but also extend the use of the mass spectrometers to the proteomics and phytochemicals departments.

Andrew Watson (Research Scientist)

Dr Andrew Watson has a background in physics and theoretical high-energy physics, and wide-ranging research interests including computation, modelling and image analysis. He joined the Institute of Food Research in 1996, to work on image processing and modelling in colloid science. More recently, he has worked on the analysis of mass spectrometry data of food allergenic proteins, with the goal of identifying digestion pathways and post-digestion peptides that retain immunological potential. In his current position in the Bioinformatics and Statistics team, he continues to focus on the bespoke analysis of mass spectrometry data, as well as offering theoretical and data analysis support more widely to IFR’s high-throughput ‘omics’ output.

Catherine Booth (Research Scientist)

Yvonne Gunning (Research Scientist)

Kathryn Cross (Research Scientist)

Kathryn Cross read Biology at the University of Hull, graduating in 2001. She then spent 4 years at the Public Analysts laboratories in Norwich where she managed the water chemistry laboratory, testing both potable water for suitability for drinking and effluent water for consent to discharge. Kathryn started at IFR in 2006 as an Assistant Microscopist, gaining expertise in preparing and imaging samples for both light microscopy and electron microscopy. Since 2011, she has taken over the running of IFR’s Microscopy department, producing images for numerous journal papers and front covers.