Speakers

Professor Ranil Coorey obtained his BSc in Food Technology from the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 1991. He then went on to pursuing his Master’s degree in Food Science and Technology at Curtin University, Perth, Australia and completed the same in 1996. Further, Professor Coorey completed his PhD at Curtin University in 2008. Professor Coorey has worked in the food industry in different countries for many years before joining Curtin University as an academic, where he continues to lecture in food product innovation and food safety. Currently, he is also the Director of Learning and Teaching in the School of Molecular and Life Sciences and former Discipline Leader of the Food Science and Technology program and its Course Coordinator. During his long career in the food industry, he has developed commercial food safety management systems and food products while working mainly in research and development and product innovation. Being a University academic as well as a researcher, he is, currently, engaged in a variety of industry-funded projects on chicken and meat cold-chain-management and safety and product innovation. Moreover, he also holds an international collaborative research project on safe chicken processing, which includes Australia and several African countries, namely, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Uganda. Professor Coorey’s other research projects include a large Australian government grant on red meat safety and industry-funded Australian native food processing and safety. Professor Coorey’s projects on Australian native food processing has identified possible unique food ingredients that can now be commercialised. Being a prolific academic writer, he has published extensively in high impact internationally peer reviewed SCI journals. Professor Coorey has supervised numerous MSc and PhD students from around the world, including those from Sri Lanka. Further, he closely works with many Sri Lankan scientists both at Curtin University and Sri Lanka. Professor Coorey was instrumental in establishing a link program between the University of Ruhuna and Curtin University and an MOU to this effect was signed in 2017. As part of the link programme, collaborative research on chicken meat safety, novel food product development etc will be carried out both in Sri Lanka and Australia. Moreover, staff and student exchange programmes, joint undergraduate and postgraduate programmes will also be established between these two Universities.