Staff

Dr. Zand is an internationally acclaimed expert in the field of infant nutrition she is the author of several peer reviewed publications and is frequently invited to deliver plenary and other invited lectures at major symposia and at international conferences on food and nutrition. She is regularly engaged with the media, including the BBC, Channel 4, and Channel 5 as an expert in food science and nutrition. Her recent commentary on Food Poverty in the Evening Standard as part of their Food Hunger December 2020 campaign was very well received.

As well as a member of the Institute of Leadership and Management (Inst.LM) Dr Zand is also a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science & Technology (FIFST) providing food and nutrition advice to both the public and private sector such as Kent, Lewisham and Greenwich councils. She is frequently invited to contribute to food related projects including Good Food in Greenwich (GFIG), promotion of healthy nutrition in relation to early life development such as “Eating Well: first year of life Practical guide” published by the Caroline Walker Trust and “Baby food in the UK” First Step Nutrition. Dr Zand's research has also been referenced in Public Health England (2019) rapid scoping review examining the role and impact of commercial baby foods and drinks on the diets of children aged 4 months.

Dr Zand has on-going engagements with large multi-national companies through to small regional SMEs developing new protocols for analytical based optimizations of the nutritional quality of new food products. She has also worked on health claims, labelling and legislation, the application of modified atmosphere packaging in prolonging post-harvest shelf-life and waste reduction of perishable food. Dr Zand also has expertise the analysis of food and the effective implementation of appropriate Total Management Quality Systems /HACCP.  She is the badge holder of Global Standard for Food Safety Issue 8 Lead Auditor and is currently responsible for the accreditation of the ASL laboratory services at the university against ISO 17025:2017.

Dr Zand is member of Kent and Medway NHS Trust Joint Research Collaboration group, All Party Parliamentary Food and Health Forum, and has recently been invited to talk on infant feeding in the UK. She is currently a member of the Research award board of Coeliac UK and is also a Food Standard Agency registered specialist, joining the board of reviewers of the Journal of Foods (JFOOD) (2020). This is in addition to previously serving as a Guest Editor for a Special issue on Infant and Child Nutrition (2015) for JFOOD, Associate Editor (2016) for Food Processing and Technology (MOJFPD), and as an Editorial Board Member for Journal of Pharmacy and Nutrition (JPANS).

Professor Delia Grace Randolph joined the University of Greenwich in May 2020. She was formerly Program Leader (joint) for the Animal and Human Health Program at the International Livestock Research Institute, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

This is part of the CGIAR, a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR research aims to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and sustainable management of natural resources. It has had a long collaboration with NRI

Originally trained as a veterinarian, she worked for five years in mainly large animal practice in Lancashire, UK. After that she worked as a volunteer for three years in Bangladesh supporting livestock development.

Subsequently she undertook a MSc at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and then a PhD at the Free University Berlin, in Germany. Her post-doctoral position was with Cornell University and ILRI, focusing on food safety. Her MSc and PhD were both on vector-borne animal diseases in Africa: namely heartwater and trypanosomiasis.

From 2006 to 2020 she worked at ILRI mainly in One Health/Ecohealth, that is research at intersection of the health of the environment, animals and people.

She has received various awards including the Grieg medal and the Trevor Blackburn award and has published  high impact factor journals such as the Lancet and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. She co-authored the first and so far only book on food safety in informal markets

Her PhD was on antimicrobial resistance and as this area has risen up the development agenda, she and her team have built a large portfolio of projects on agriculture-associated antimicrobial resistance.

She has worked with the World Animal Health Organisation, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Bank and other international, regional and national organisations.

Rania is a food processing engineer. She joined the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich in September 2022 as a lecturer in food safety and food innovation. Rania obtained her PhD from Loughborough University where her thesis investigated creating a knowledge-base for food reformulation in an approach to tackle obesity. Prior to obtaining her PhD, Rania worked in the industry and several research centres including the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France, KU-Leuven in Belgium, and Technological University Dublin in Ireland. She gained multidisciplinary knowledge on product development, food analysis (microbiology, chemistry and sensory) and nutrition. Her research interests are related to product development (e.g. sugar and fat reduction) and food sustainability including the innovation of alternative protein.

Sarah joined Natural Resources Institute in 2017 as a Project Controller before becoming Project Delivery Manager. 

In 2006 Sarah became ACCA qualified and has comprehensive experience in all areas of business finance function.

Sarah’s responsibilities include complex financial reporting and project management for EC contracts and UK donor institutions.

Specialisms include

• Project financial reporting systems of multiple funding bodies and international donor organisations.
• Project audit requirements of international funding bodies including the EC, UKRI and FCDO.
• Grant Management.
• Belgian salary and employment entitlements.
• ACCA Accounting rules and practices.

Dr Stacey Duvenage joined the Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich as a Lecturer in Food Safety within the Food and Markets Department in July 2021.

Before joining the NRI, Stacey held the position of Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Part-time lecturer within the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Research areas included bacterial food safety of fresh produce in the formal and informal sector, food genomics, and antibiotic resistance in the agroecosystem. Stacey is a bacterial food safety expert with a passion for fresh produce safety within the formal and informal supply chains. Further aspects of research include pathogen and antimicrobial resistant organism occurrence and characterisation, including traditional and next generation technologies. Additionally, a further focus area includes quality indicators of water and fresh produce through metadata analysis. She is very passionate about next generation technologies and was instrumental in attaining the funding for three high impact, next generation and cutting-edge technology platforms within the Plant Health and Safety laboratories. Stacey has published several papers in high impact journals and has co-supervised numerous students at Hons, MSc and PhD levels.

Tracey has worked for the University since 2004 and has been an integral part of the Natural Resources Institute teaching team since March 2016. As NRI’s Programme Administration Manager, Tracey provides comprehensive support for the implementation of NRI's taught degree programmes. She plays a pivotal role in planning and facilitating student recruitment and programme promotion, serving as the primary point of contact for our students and teaching academics.

Key expertise:

• Programme Administration: Management of academic programme logistics and operations
• Student Support: Providing guidance and support to students & addressing queries
• Records Management: Ensuring compliance with data protection regulations
• Event Coordination: Organisation of student-related events and activities & collaboration with stakeholders for event planning
• Policy Implementation: Implementation of university policies and procedures & ensuring compliance with academic regulations
• Communication: Liaison with faculty, staff, and external partners on student matters & facilitating effective communication channels for student-related issues

Valerie worked closely with the Greenwich Research and Enterprise team as part of a regional consortium before joining Greenwich University full-time 10 years ago. Her role was to help start-up and more established businesses to develop and launch innovative products or services in the UK and abroad. As an innovation and growth specialist for Innovate UK Edge, she helped businesses develop and manage their innovation, developed sustainable and profitable business model and in many cases access finance to support their growth. The support package includes; identifying suitable sources of public or private funding; bringing new and existing products and services to market successfully; managing innovation processes; establishing market and understanding market potential; and  connecting to the wider innovation ecosystem.

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.

Dr Barbara Tiddi joined the University of Greenwich in 2023. In her previous appointments, Barbara was a Lecturer in Conservation Science at the Bristol Zoological Society, and an Associate Lecturer in Biological Anthropology in the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent. Before that, she was based for six years at the German Primate Center (DPZ) as postdoctoral fellow in the Cognitive Ethology Lab where she investigated the adaptive function of female sexual signals in Neotropical primates. Barbara received her PhD in Natural Sciences and Psychology from Liverpool John Moores University (UK), and a BSc in Biological Sciences and Applied Ecology from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy).

Much of Barbara’s previous work has focused on investigating how specific features of primate social systems shape their behavioural responses in a way that deviates from what broadly predicted by ecological and economic models used in the study of animal behaviour. Her collaborative work with the Argentinean National Research Council (CONICET) has also contributed to address the issue of primate-human interaction within the context of parasite infections and social connectivity. Her research has been largely based on fieldwork in Argentina and Costa Rica.