Maria-Isabel Gil has a Pharmacy degree and the PhD in Biology. She is a senior researcher at the Food Science and Technology Department at CEBAS-CSIC institute in Murcia, Spain. Her research activities are related to quality and safety of fresh produce, particularly fresh-cut leafy vegetables. She coordinates an expert group involved in fundamental and applied aspects of preharvest and postharvest factors affecting quality and safety of fruits and vegetables. One of their main tasks is the control of microbiological contamination during production, processing and storage. Another important task is the evaluation of the effect of different agronomic, genetic and technological factors on the phytochemical content. She is the leader of many R&D projects with companies as well as European and National Research Programs. She collaborates with national and international groups.

Athina Lazaridou is an Assistant Professor in Food Physical Chemistry in the Dept. of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She received her bachelor’s (1995), M.Sc. (1999), and Ph.D. (2003) degrees from the same University. She has worked as post-doctoral fellow in the University of Manitoba, Dept. of Food Science (2003-2005) as well as in the Food Science and Technology Dept. of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2005-2006), and she also had an appointment as Research Associate (2006-2010) in the same Department. Her research interests include the structure-composition relations of food products, including fruits and the storage effects on texture and stability of foods and their constituents. She is the author/co-author of 31 peer-reviewed publications (SCI journals), 3 book chapters, 8 articles in conference proceedings, and has more than 50 contributions to national and international conferences and over 1300 citations (h-factor 16). She has worked in more than 10 International and European research projects. Dr Lazaridou was the recipient of the ‘Young Scientist’s Award – 2009’ of the Rheology Division of the American Association of Cereal Chemists (AACC) International, in recognition of her outstanding research contributions in the area of rheology and texture of food products. She is currently a member of the editorial board of the “Bioactive Carbohydrate and Dietary Fiber’ journal.

Vlasios Goulas works as special teaching staff in the Department of Agricultural Sciences, Biotechnology & Food Science of the Technological University of Cyprus. He received his bachelor degree from the University of Ioannina, Department of Chemistry, majoring in the field of ‘Food Chemistry’. He continued his post-graduate studies in the same University and was awarded his PhD degree in 2009 after completing his thesis entitled ‘Development of hyphenated LC-NMR techniques for the exploitation of bioactive components in nature products’. His post-doctoral research was carried out on in the Department of Agricultural Sciences, Biotechnology & Food Science at Cyprus University of Technology. His scientific interests includes the study of chemical composition and quality of food of plant origin using state-of the art analytical techniques, the effect of processing on bioactive compounds and the exploitation of natural products as functional foods.

George Manganaris is currently Assistant Professor at Cyprus University of Technology in the field of Arboriculture/Postharvest physiology and Technology. He was awarded his PhD degree in 2004 from the Faculty of Agriculture at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and carried out post-doctoral research at University of California at Davis (Department of Plant Sciences) and in the University of Padova after receiving a Marie Curie Individual Intra European fellowship. His scientific interests includes the quality evaluation of fleshy fruits with the employment of physiological, biochemical and phytochemical indicators, the elucidation of the biological basis of fruit ripening syndrome with particular emphasis on the development of physiological disorders, the use of environmentally friendly methods for maintaining quality of horticultural crops and the responsiveness of plants to abiotic stress conditions. To date, he has been the author of 37 scientific papers (19 as senior author) in peer-reviewed journals (736 citations, h-index=15). Data from my work have also been presented in review papers (5), book chapters (7) and full texts in Conference proceedings (9).