Organising Committee

Jette Feveile Young
Professor, Aarhus University

Jette Feveile Young is professor at Institute of Food Science, Aarhus University where she since 2009 has been leading a science group on Differentiated and Biofunctional Food. She holds a M.Sc. in Food Science from University in Copenhagen and a PhD from University of Wales. She did a Post Doc at the Institute of Human Nutrition at University of Copenhagen and perused her career at Aarhus University where the research focuses around meat quality as well as studying nutritional effects of naturally occurring food components using in vitro cell based model systems. More than 20 years of research experience within meat science and in vitro cell based techniques including primary muscle cells has led to her interest in several aspects of cultivated meat. She is involved in and leads several projects including a CellFood hub at Aarhus University.

Sissel Beate Rønning
Senior Scientist, Nofima

Sissel Beate Rønning is a senior scientist at the food research institute Nofima, where she works with CellAg, skeletal muscle development, food quality, bioactivity, by-products, and food and health. She tries to use modern technology in food production for a growing population, and has attracted funding for several projects within the field of CellAg. Her primary focus is: Can we culture meat, and can we use the by-products from the food industry in the process? Sissel holds a master’s degree in gene technology at the University of Tromsø and has a Ph.D. in GMOs from the National Veterinary Institute. Her postdoc focused on cancer research and human medicine in the Department of Pathology, Rikshospitalet, Norway

Emilia Nordlund
Research team leader og Food Solutions, Research Manager, BA53 Industrial biotechnology and food at VTT

Emilia is working at VTT as a Research Manager of Industrial Biotechnology and Food. Emilia’s ambition is to generate well-being to people and environment by innovative solutions based on food and biotechnology research. By education Emilia is DSc (Tech) for Bioprocess engineering from Technical Helsinki University of Technology and acting also as a docent in Food Biotechnology at University of Helsinki. Her scientific expertise is in plant-based ingredient and food technologies, especially bioprocessing, and development of novel food processing concepts for efficient and sustainable food chain. She has explored how cellular agriculture, both microbial biomass, plant cell cultures and precision fermentation can be used for future food production, and for example, she is currently coordinating Food without Fields project funded by Catch the Carbon program of Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland. Also, Emilia was leading the organization committee of the 1st International Cellular Agriculture conference organized in Helsinki in 2023.

Jacob Schaldemose Peterson
Co-founder & CEO - re:meat

Jacob Schaldemose Peterson serves as the co-founder and CEO of Re:meat, Sweden’s pioneering cultivated meat company. Following the completion of his studies with an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management, specializing in climate technologies, he spent a decade as a management consultant and partner at Implement Consulting Group. During this tenure, he gained invaluable experience working extensively at executive levels within the European food value chain, focusing on strategy, business development, innovation, and leadership transformations.
Acknowledging the significant environmental impact of conventional meat production, along with a personal realization that altering people’s dietary habits is more difficult than flying a rocket to Mars, he made a leap of faith decision to commit to bringing radically sustainable meat with zero behaviour change to people’s plates. Re:meat is dedicated to making sustainable and delicious meat widely accessible to the many people by efficiently scaling up production.

Scientific Committee

Mona Pedersen
Senior Scientist, Nofima

Mona E. Pedersen is a senior scientist at the food research institute Nofima, where she works with CellAg, value increase of by-products, biomaterials for tissue engineering, and food and health. She translates her expertise in extracellular matrix and cell communication to cultured meat technology and sustainable food production system, and has supervised PhD-students and master students in the field. Mona holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Oslo, Norway with connective tissue and meat quality, and post docs in human medicine focusing on skeletal and muscle system.

Eva Falch
Head of NTNU Food Forum & Associate Professor, NTNU

Eva Falch is a food scientist with a professional career heavily motivated by a wish for better utilization of global food resources. She is head of the multidisciplinary NTNU Food Forum which is a cross faculty forum comprising expertise from >25 departments and working towards a fair, healthy, and sustainable food system. She has >25 years’ experience from R&I and strategy work in food- and biotechnology industry, research institute, and the last 10 years in academia. This experience enables to approach the food challenges and opportunities from different angels. She is teaching students in food biotechnology, food industry framework (food policy), food innovations and future food. She is engaged in steering boards at European (e.g. European Food Forum, JPI - A healthy diet for a health life) national and regional levels. From 2024 she has been heading the Steering Board of the Norwegian Research Council's Portfolio of Food and Bioresources Eva has strong engagement for sustainable food, multi-actor collaboration and students as changing agents.

Anneli Ritala
Principal Scientist, VTT

Anneli Ritala is a Principal Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland working in Industrial Biotechnology and Food business area. Her expertise is in plant biotechnology specifically in cell and tissue culture and in the biotechnological production of plant-derived compounds and recombinant proteins. My main research interest has recently been in cellular agriculture particularly in developing plant cell cultures for food use. I´m very much interested in valorization of agri-food side streams as raw materials for cell factories. Anneli has a PhD Pharm. degree and holds a Associate professorship at the University of Helsinki in the pharmaceutical biology.

Martin Krøyer Rasmussen
Associate Professor, Aarhus University

Martin Krøyer Rasmussen is associate professor at Department of Food Science, Aarhus University. He holds a M.Sc. in muscle physiology from University of Copenhagen and a PhD in food Science from Aarhus University. He has extensive experience in cell isolation and culturing, and optimization of cell culture media and has for almost 15 years worked with meat quality and food bioactivity. After his PhD, Rasmussen did a Post Doc at University of Montpellier, France, before returning to Aarhus University. Taking up a position as Tenure Track – Assistant Professor. He is currently involved and work packages leader of several projects within cultivated meat at Aarhus University.

Eva Nordberg Karlsson
Professor in Biotechnology, Lund University

Eva Nordberg Karlsson is a Professor in Biotechnology, heading the Div Biotechnology at Lund University, and the Master contact for EIT Food at Lund University. Her research focus is on enzymatic and microbial technologies, for biorefinery applications (of agricultural and marine resources), with a strong focus on carbohydrate conversions, especially related to increased side-stream utilization. She is currently a partner in several European projects.
More details can be found at Lund University Research Portal: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/eva-nordberg-karlsson
Orcid ID: 0000-0002-8597-7050

Claus Heiner Bang-Berthelsen
Senior Scientist, Technical University of Denmark

Claus Heiner Bang-Berthelsen is a Senior Scientist in the research group of Microbial biotechnology and biorefining at the National Food Institute (DTU Food). Bang-Berthelsen holds an MSc degree and a doctoral degree from the University of Copenhagen. Additionally, Bang-Berthelsen worked in industry for several years before his employment at DTU Food. A general theme has been the interest in applications that have benefit for society as developing functional foods and food additives. Among the solutions are the development of different microbial alternative proteins from fungi and yeast grown in alternative feedstocks from side-streams. Additionally, his team works on utilizing their culture collection (NFICC) housed at DTU. Current status is 650 sequenced strains of QPS microorganisms. The full collection contains more than 4500 strains. This interesting collection of strains have been utilized for plant-based dairy alternatives, meat alternatives as well as hybrid products in projects with academic and industrial collaborators.

Hanna Tuomisto
Professor, University of Helsinki

Hanna L. Tuomisto, is a Professor of Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Helsinki and Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). She leads the Future Sustainable Food Systems -research group at the University of Helsinki. Tuomisto has over 15 years of experience in the sustainability assessment of cellular agriculture. She has a strong experience especially in the environmental sustainability assessment of cell-cultured foods using life cycle assessment (LCA) method. Her research group has also projects related to social sustainability, including studies of farmers’ and political stakeholders’ perceptions of cellular agriculture. Tuomisto holds an MSc degree in Agroecology from the University of Helsinki and a doctoral degree from the University of Oxford. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) before returning to the University of Helsinki in 2017.

Local Organizing Committee

Jette Feveile Young
Professor, Aarhus University

Margrethe Therkildsen
Associate Professor, Aarhus University

Martin Krøyer Rasmussen
Associate Professor, Aarhus University

Stig Skrivergaard
Postdoc, Aarhus University

Signe Nørretranders
Administrative Officer, Aarhus University