Reducing Pathogen Control Challenges in Industrial Agriculture

Welcome to the last KTH FOOD Faculty lunch seminar of 2024! This time, we welcome Lisa Kappel and Sadia Ullah, who will present a cutting-edge approach to reducing the burden of pathogen control in industrial agriculture, stemming from the recently completed EU project “NoPest”. The project involved a consortium of four European universities, an Israeli university, and the company Sipcam Oxon.

Schedule:

11:30: We start with half an hour where participants can eat their packed lunch and mingle.

12:00: Sadia Ullah and Lisa Kappel present and answer questions.

About the speakers:
Sadia Ullah is a postdoctoral researcher in KTH's Glycoscience Group, specializing in analytical biochemistry to study complex carbohydrates—major components of our food. Her research focuses on the chemo-enzymatic valorization of plant and algal biomass to functionalize carbohydrate materials. Her work spans from Pakistan to the University of Brasília, where she investigated the enzymatic degradation of carbohydrates. Currently, she focuses on carbohydrate synthesis to better understand their role in the virulence of food pathogens.
 
Lisa Kappel specializes in the biochemistry and biology of food-related microbial organisms, both beneficial and harmful to food production. With a background in microbiology and biochemistry, her main areas of interest include protein and genome engineering of bacteria, yeasts, and filamentous microbes, as well as the development and production of microbial and biological pesticides for sustainable agricultural production. She has worked at various Austrian universities (University of Graz, University of Innsbruck, University of technology TU-Vienna) and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Glycoscience Department at KTH.