Ritva Repo-Carrasco-Valencia (Ph.D. Food Chemistry, University of Turku; MSc. Cereal Chemistry and Technology, University of Helsinki) has been passionate about Andean native grains ever since she first learnt about them in the 1980s while living in Cusco, Peru, the capital of the old Inca Empire. Through her research, she has raised awareness of the numerous nutritional benefits of quinoa, amaranth, kañiwa and tarwi (Andean lupin). Although consumed by indigenous peoples for centuries, these grains had been shunned by the wider Peruvian population in favour of a Western diet for most of the past century. Today, their high nutritional value is better understood and quinoa is now ubiquitous in health stores worldwide. Dr. Repo-Carrasco-Valencia is currently a professor and research scientist at the National Agrarian University La Molina (UNALM), in Lima, Peru. She is director of the Center of Innovation for Andean Grains at UNALM and leads various international research projects. Among these is the European Union-funded Protein2Food (P2F) project, which aims at developing innovative, cost-effective and resource-efficient plant proteins. In 2017, Dr Repo was awarded the Order of the Lion of Finland in recognition of her work. Mabel C. Tomás, Ph.D, is a Research Scientist of Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina, and conducts her research activities at Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo at Criotecnología de Alimentos-CIDCA (CONICET-CIC-UNLP). (Argentina). She supervises research of graduate students and visiting scholars and works closely with local and global research and education. She is also Professor of Food Toxicology at the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas (UNLP) and in the post-graduate Master in Food Technology and Hygiene (UNLP). She obtained her degree in Chemistry at Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales of the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). Later, she received her Ph. D. in Chemical Sciences from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) (Argentina). She also worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at Instituto del Frío (CSIC, Spain). Her research interests are related to the development, the characterization and the application of delivery systems of different bioactive compounds in foods. The development of functional foods enriched with omega-3 fatty acids, mainly from chia seeds, and their nutraceutical aspects represents for her activities an important challenge. The major area of her research is on functional lipids, (omega-3 fatty acids, phospholipids, lecithin), phenolic bioactives and other natural antioxidants of plants and preservation technologies in their role to retard lipid oxidation contributing with benefits on human health. M. C.Tomás has published about 70 research papers, edited 1 book, 18 book chapters, and leads different research projects. She served as President of the International Society for Fat Research (ISF), Chair of the Phospholipid Division and member of the American Oil Chemists¿ Society (AOCS), USA. Also, she is a founding member of the International Chia i-link Network and the Iberoamerican Valuable Seeds Group of CYTED.
