Miss Xi He has conducted her PhD study under the supervision of Prof. Henryk Jeleń in the Food Volatilomics and Sensomics Group at Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poland from 2017 to 2023. She was studying the chromatographic techniques to analyse food volatiles for accessing food quality and authenticity. She has defended her doctoral dissertation and awarded as distinction based on top-shelf publications for example: Food Chemistry, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, and Journal of Chromatography A.

Miss Xi He is very active in the scientific activity, she has given talks at 3 international conferences, presented posters, or contributed as a co-author at 7 conferences, for instance 42^nd International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography and the 15^th GCxGC Symposium, 25^th International Symposium on Separation Sciences, Challenges in Food Flavor and Volatile Analysis.

• He, X., Yangming, H., Górska-Horczyczak, E., Wierzbicka, A. and Jeleń, H.H., 2021. Rapid analysis of Baijiu volatile compounds fingerprint for their aroma and regional origin authenticity assessment. Food Chemistry, 337, p.128002. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2020.128002
• He, X., Gbiorczyk, K., Jeleń, H.H. Can volatiles fingerprints be an alternative to isotope ratio mass spectrometry in the botanical origin determination of spirits? Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 71(5), p.2637-2643. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.2c08141
• He, X. and Jeleń, H.H., 2021. Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography–time of flight mass spectrometry (GC× GC-TOFMS) in conventional and reversed column configuration for the investigation of Baijiu aroma types and regional origin. Journal of Chromatography A, 1636, p.461774. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chroma.2020.46177

Miss Xi He is interested in the application of GC and GCxGC hyphenated techniques in Food volatile and flavour analysis.

Food volatile compounds contains the food aroma compounds which are contribute to the food flavour and off-flavour, the application of GC-O combined with GCxGC-ToF-MS can identify such aroma active compounds.

The volatile compounds convey the food quality and authenticity information as well, for example, to trace the botanical and geographical origin of the food products by comparing the volatile compounds profiles.

Teach flavour analysis/techniques to other researchers/students as well as perform demo to visitors

Growing Kent & Medway projects

• Help with analytical work for businesses as part of the food accelerator programme.
• Business Innovation Voucher (BIV) project(s) which may require flavour analysis (will start from March/April ’24).
• Flavour analysis project with SepSolve/Markes (comparison of flavour profiles of the extruded versus non-extruded plant proteins).

Project PROFILE

Aim to produce protein rich fractions from Spirulina for food applications with improved taste and environmental impact.

• Flavour profiling and identification of the key (off) flavour markers of Spirulina microalgae and development of potential masking strategies for off-flavour.
• Optimisation of protein product with improved taste by profiling and comparing key flavour compounds in protein extracts and raw biomass.
• Help validation of the scaled-up production and extraction of Spirulina by identifying the optimal stage during the product life-cycle to tackle the reduction of off-flavour compounds.

• Responsible for overall management of GCxGC-ToF MS and to undertake day-to-day operational responsibilities and upkeeping/maintenance.
• Act as the technical Lead for the research project linked to the flavour analysis, deliver enterprise/corporate project, and involve in (student) training.
• Maintain and implement NRI’s QMS procedures and work instructions as well as responsible for ordering consumables for the GC-MS, overseeing installation where required.

2023 distinction of the PhD dissertation, Poznan University of Life Sciences