Department of Food Science

Niki’s research is focused on creating a bridge between instrumental food quality measurements and sensory science. She uses multidisciplinary research designs and statistical approaches to associate innovative technological advancements with sensory and consumer perception, with a greater aim to create efficient and sustainable solutions for the food sector. Her areas of interest include food related waste reduction, research on novel and sustainable food ingredients, and eco-friendly, green food product solutions. She is enthusiastic about food research innovation through entrepreneurial activities. Within these frames, she has been working closely with start-up food companies and was awarded a place at the Food Innovator Fellowship 2019 from European Institute of Technology (EIT). She has a solid background on fish quality and aquaculture research and applying multivariate statistical tools to explore novel sensory methodologies.

Niki acquired her PhD degree at the Food Quality Perception and Society group of the Department of Food Science of Aarhus University in 2018. Her PhD project entitled “Quality Characterization of Emerging Aquaculture Fish Products: A Multisensory and Instrumental approach” was funded by the 7^th European Union Framework Programme DIVERSIFY and was conducted in collaboration with the Hellenic Center for Marine Research, Greece. Niki has a Master degree in Food Science and Technology with a specialization in Sensory Science from the Copenhagen University. During her MSc thesis, she focused on characterizing the aroma and flavour profile of red wine cultivars from Denmark through both sensory and instrumental techniques.  Her Bachelor degree was in Biology from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GR.

Research methods & competences

Sensory profiling methodologies

• Descriptive analysis
• Check-all-that-apply (CATA)
• Rate-all-that-apply (RATA)
• Pivot profile
• Projective mapping

Shelf life analysis-Freshness

• QIM (Quality Index Method)
• Off odour development

Consumer perception & questionnaire design

• Quantitative (including hedonic evaluation)
• Qualitative

Instrumental methodologies

• Volatile compound extraction and identification: Dynamic headspace extraction (DHS) & Gas-Chromatography Mass Spectrometry operation (GC-MS)
• Fatty acid extraction and identification: GC-FID
• Proximate composition analyses

Correlation of sensory and instrumental measurements

Multivariate and Univariate statistical analyses

Design of cross-disciplinary experiments

Food product research areas

• Fish products
• Meat products
• Plant based products
• Alternative/ novel protein sources (Plant-based, insects etc.) and products