Dr. Michael N. A. Eskin, a former Chair and Associate Dean, is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg Canada. He is recognized internationally for his pioneering research on the physical, chemical and performance properties that led to the successful development of canola oil. For this and later research, he received many prestigious awards including the American Oil Chemists' Society (AOCS) Supelco Research Award, considered the world prize in lipids, and the IFT Lifetime Achievement Award in Memory of Nicolas Appert. He is also the recipient of the Stephen S. Change Award from IFT and AOCS and the Alton Bailey Medal, Herbert J Dutton Award, Timothy Mounts Award, and the A.R. Distinguished Service Award from AOCS and the William J Eva Award from the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology. In 2016, he was awarded the Order of Canada ,and in 2022 The Order of Manitoba, for his significant contributions to the success of the Canadian canola oil industry. He has authored and edited 18 books , 65 chapters and over 160 papersMichel Aliani is Professor, Food and Human Nutritional Sciences at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Aliani is a flavor chemist and an expert in sensory and analytical chemistry and biochemistry of foods and food products. He holds continuous funding (>14 years) from the NSERC Discovery Grants program, the pulse, CFI, crop science clusters within the Canadian Agricultural Partnership programs (AAFC), NSERC RTI. Over the last 6 years, he has trained 19 HQP (10 undergraduate, 4 M.Sc, 3 Ph.D., 1 PDF, and 2 Research Associates). Since 2015, he has published 48 manuscripts and 1 book dedicated to Bitterness in Foods. Dr. Aliani’s team is dedicated to assessing the sensory and flavour chemistry of functional foods using our unique flavoromics platform Dr. Bird completed her B.Sc. in Biology from the University of Waterloo and M.Sc. and Ph.D in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Guelph, where she specialized in Nutritional Toxicology. She has been recognized by the American Association for Cancer Research for her discovery of a novel method to identify early precancerous changes in the colon. This process is now used internationally to identify the risk of developing colon cancer, and potential cancer- preventing agents. In 1991, Dr. Bird received the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council's Women in Science Career Award at the University of Manitoba, where she served as professor, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, and the Dean of the Faculty of Human Ecology. In 2003, she was appointed Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Waterloo.
