Sebnem Harsa's Biography

Sebnem Harsa, Professor, Izmir Institute Of Technology

Prof. Harsa has been interested Biotechnology and Food Bio processes for 30 years. Her interest in these areas developed at the end of her first degree in Food Engineering, when she went to Reading University, UK to study for her PhD in Food Technology. She was appointed Postdoctoral Fellow in Tokyo University, Japan (1992-1994). After, started working as Ast. Prof. in Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey in 1994 and contributed for the construction of this university. She has become an Associate Prof. in 1995 and later in 2001 appointed as full professor. She has set up the new postgraduate programmes, Biotech & Bio engineering and Food Eng and has been department Head, Vice Dean for many years, finally in 2013 she has completed director positions. She has found her own start-up company and carrying on industrial and academic projects.Her research is supported by the grants from DPT, TUBITAK, British Council, EU and Japanese research and education funds. She has directed appr. 20 national and 5 international projects and more than 7 industrial (2 of them are international) projects. She has published appr. 50 peer reviewed international and appr. 10 national journal articles. Others are 75 international and 40 conference proceedings, 5 international research and 3 other education reports and wrote 3 thesis. Also Editor of 5 international Journals in the area of food engineering & nutrition and food chemistry & nanotechnology.Prof. Harsa has supervised more than 40 MSc and 12 PhD thesis in the area of Biotech&Bioeng, FoodEng&Nutrition, Materials Science&Eng., Chemical Eng and Environmental Eng. She is currently directing academic research projects on nutritional health and food science & engineering and other interdisciplinary subjects. Production of value added bio products such as cheese and yogurt starter cultures; probiotics; prebiotics; preparation and characterization of whey protein, nanotubes and bioactive peptides. Functional food process design, in-vitrodigestion. Food ingredients for malnutrition (phenylketonuria (PKU) disease, celiacdisease, glutenandlactoseintolerance). She has been the consultant of some industrial companies. Functional food ingredients such as starter cultures, protective cultures, sourdough bacteria, probiotics and their proto types are the main products of her company.She has 2 patents pending.
Other area of interest are : Fermentation technology; downstream processing design, scale-up and economics; adsorption and desorption processes; chromatographic techniques; protein purification; biomaterials; production and purification of value-added bioproducts (such as enzymes, organic acids, antimicrobials and antioxidants); micro/nano encapsulation and also proteomics. Utilization of agrifood industrial wastes, micro/nano fibrillated celluloses and biodegradable food packaging.