Industry-academia partnership delivers high impact PhD

Nicola (Nick) Caporaso has graduated with a raft of papers, prizes and posters under his belt after a hugely successful joint PhD with food research company Campden BRI and the University of Nottingham.

Nick’s PhD developed food imaging techniques to measure the quality of wheat, cocoa and coffee. He has published seven papers in international peer-reviewed journals, delivered six presentations and presented three posters at national or international conferences. He received the Society of Chemical Industry Best Poster award at a major food conference and first prize from the Society of Chemical Industry and Royal Society of Chemistry for the best scientific contribution at the 3rd Nursten symposium.

He used Campden BRI’s near-infrared hyperspectral imaging system to develop rapid methods to measure the quality of individual coffee and cocoa beans and wheat grains. The method Nick developed allows the uniformity of samples to be assessed and undesirable grains or beans to be identified.

Nick graduated with a PhD in Food Science in July 2018. He was jointly supervised by Prof. Ian Fisk, professor of flavour chemistry in the Department of Food Sciences at the University of Nottingham, and Dr. Martin Whitworth, principal scientist in the Department of Production and Processing Research at Campden BRI.

Dr. Caporaso is continuing his research at the University of Nottingham through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership.

Campden BRI works with a number of universities to support innovative PhD students and run an annual programme of year-in-industry placements for undergraduate students in relevant disciplines.