Find an expert

Dr. Kontogiorgos has received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Food Science from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). A full scholarship was then awarded from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (I.K.Y) for Ph.D. studies in Food Science at the University of Guelph (Canada). After his Ph.D. degree, he worked as an NSERC research fellow at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (Canada). Following that post, he worked as academic at the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Huddersfield (UK) before joining the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences at the University of Queensland. Dr. Kontogiorgos research interests are focused in the area of polysaccharide characterisation and physical chemistry of food macromolecules, gels, and colloidal systems. Currently, he is working on the physical, chemical and technological properties of soluble and insoluble fibres extracted from agricultural wastes. Dr Kontogiorgos is Associate Editor of Food Hydrocolloids and Associate Editor of Food Biophysics.

Jason Stokes is a Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering and leads the Premium Food and Beverages Program in Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator. This program focuses on industry-driven research to enhance onshore value-adding and business growth opportunities. Jason obtained his BE (Chem) and PhD from University of Melbourne, and was a Researcher with Unilever R&D United Kingdom from 1999-2008, before joining UQ in 2008.

Jason is a recognized expert in the rheology, lubrication, structure and processing of complex fluids and soft materials, including food and beverages. He pioneered the development of rheology and soft contact tribology techniques to provide new insights into oral processing and sensory perception that includes mouthfeel, taste and flavour. His research has uncovered the physical and structural properties driving the complex sensory attributes of a wide variety of food and beverages. These are used by industry to engineer next-generation foods with improved quality and sustainability.

He served in a leadership role as Deputy Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and IT (EAIT), 2020-23, with a specific focus on research training, development and well-being of emerging researchers. He has previously held other senior roles inlcude Acting Associate Dean of Research in Faculty of EAIT and Director of Research in the School of Chemical Engineering.

Some key areas of his research include:

1. Rheology, tribology, and interfacial properties of soft matter, food and beverages, including development of methods to uncover relevant material properties of food and beverages driving mouthfeel, texture and flavour. .
2. Soft materials and Soft matter such as gels, soft glasses, suspensions, microgels, emulsions and foams, with particular emphasis on using fundamental approaches to uncover structure-property relationships for complex systems.
3. Colloids and hydrocolloids such as nanocrystalline cellulose, microgels, polysaccharides, proteins and starches.
4. Development of structure-property-processing relationships for rational design of food and beverages, including dairy & plant-based and solids & liquids.
5. Aqueous lubrication, transport phenomena and flow of non-Newtonian fluids and their application across various industries (minerals, waste, foods, firefighting fluids, polishing fluids).

Professor Stokes lectures and coordinates teaching modules in the Chemical Engineering degree, with particular strengths in Fluid Mechanics and currently coordinates and lectures both Transport Phenomenon (CHEE4009) and Engineering Placement (ENGG7292) courses.

Yuan Xu completed a Bachelor of Engineering degree (Chemical and Material) from the University of Queensland in 2015. After that, he started his PhD in the research field of colloidal science, rheology and chemical engineering, supervised by Professor Jason Stokes. He has continued in UQ as postdoctoral research fellow since 2019, at which, he has contributed to multidisciplinary projects including viscoelastic lubrication of soft matter systems, and programming structural anisotropy in nanocellulose hydrogels. His research capability focuses on the area of rheology, colloidal science/ physical chemistry, material/physical science, soft matters/complex fluids, and tribology/lubrication.