Bodegas Viñas Serranas

Start date: 03/09/2024

End date: 02/03/2028

Cristina García Cabezón
Inorganic Chemistry Full Professor

Start date: 31/08/2016

End date: 31/12/2018

Antioxidants present in foods have an important beneficial effect on health, as well as contributing to the organoleptic characteristics of foods and their preservation. Although there are several methods for detecting the presence of antioxidants and analysing the antioxidant capacity of foods, these techniques require long analysis times and are therefore not suitable for routine tests at industrial level. This project applies new technologies developed in the field of Materials and Nanoscience to the design of new sensors capable of efficiently analysing the presence of antioxidants in food.

Specifically, this project will develop new cellular polymers with nanometric pore size (nanocellular polymers), with a high surface to volume ratio, which will act as a support for sensitive materials such as metallic nanoparticles or phthalocyanines. These new materials will be fabricated using environmentally clean technologies and have the potential to substantially improve the sensing capability of current solutions.

These devices will be used as electrochemical impedance and/or voltammetric sensors and will be able to detect antioxidants typically present in beverages and foods such as wines, with detection limits in the 10^-3-10^-5 M range. The sensors will be disposable and inexpensive as demanded by the food industry.

Start date: 11/11/2018

End date: 15/11/2021

Although various methods exist to analyse food, these techniques require long analysis times and are therefore not suitable for routine testing at an industrial level. With the development of Industry 4.0, the food sector requires the development of new sensors capable of analysing the composition of its products.

This project applies new technologies developed in the field of Materials and Nanoscience to the design of new tubular cellular polymeric sensors with great potential in the agri-food sector.

In particular, new tubular polymers will be developed for the first time, with a high surface to volume ratio, which will act as a support for sensitive materials such as metallic nanoparticles, carbon nanofibres or phthalocyanines. These new porous materials will be obtained by combining two processes, starting with the fabrication of polymeric fibres using electrospinning, a simple, versatile technique that allows the preparation of 1-dimensional micro- and nanomaterials (fibres). Subsequently, the surface area/volume ratio of these fibres, and thus their potential response as sensors, will be drastically increased by generating internal porosity in the fibres. From the initial solid fibres, tubular polymers (hollow fibres) will be obtained for the first time using the gas dissolution foaming technique, a simple and versatile method that stands out for its environmental sustainability, the absence of hazardous chemicals and the absence of waste generation. The characteristics of this new generation of sensitive materials, with controlled diameters and porosities, have the potential to substantially improve the detection capability of current solutions. In addition, the possibility to build multifunctional structures by modifying fibres with nanomaterials may produce additional benefits through synergistic effects.

These highly porous materials/nanomaterials will be used to build devices to be used as voltammetric and/or electrochemical impedance sensors and will be used to detect compounds belonging to three families of interest in the food industry: polyphenols (such as catechol or vanillic acid), sugars (such as glucose and lactose) or organic acids (such as lactic and malic), with detection limits in the range of at least 10^-5 M. Finally, the performance of the sensors will be evaluated on real wine and milk samples. The sensors will be disposable and inexpensive, as demanded by the food industry.

Start date: 01/01/2019

End date: 31/12/2021

Mª Luz Rodríguez Méndez
Full professor in Inorganic Chemistry

Cristina García Cabezón
Associate professor in Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering

Number of participating researchers: 5

Nowadays a variety of methods are available to analyze foods at the laboratory level. However, these techniques are long and are not suitable for on-line or routine analysis. With the irruption of the Industry 4.0 it has become clear that the food industry needs to develop chemical sensors able to analyze the composition of their products.  In this project, electrochemical sensors (voltammetric, potentiometric and impedimetric) specifically dedicated to the analysis of milks will be developed. The use of nanomaterials and bionanomaterials as sensitive materials will allow obtaining innovative sensors with improved capabilities. The best nanosensors will be combined in a multisensory configuration to obtain a nanoelectronic tongue (nanoe-tongue) that will be used  to analyze various categories of milks (raw milk, and milks with different fat content, lactose content, adulterations and spoilage) provided by milk producers. Finally, mathematical models will be established between the signals obtained by the electronic tongue and chemical parameters measured using traditional chemical methods. These mathematical models will be used to train the electronic tongue that, in this way, will be able to assess the values of several parameters simultaneously. Finally, we will envisage the development of portable nanosensors and to implement a portable prototype of the nanoe-tongue in order to analyze the quality of milk on line. The results of the project will lay a foundation for a cost-effective, real-time, in situ, easy-to-use method for milk quality control that could be applied within and outside the premises of a control quality laboratory.

Inscriptions:

Registration is free and will be done by filling out the application form and sending it to the indicated email address. Deadline for confirmation of attendance and/or participation is October 13, 2023.

Don’t miss the opportunity to come and learn about the research of your colleagues!!

Director of the Consolidated Research Unit recognised by the Junta de Castilla y León UIC080 and the UVASens research group, María Luz Rodríguez Méndez is part of the list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists recently published by Stanford University.

She began her work in the field of sensors during her post-doctoral training at the University of Windsor (Canada), which she completed with stays at various universities in France, Italy and Germany.

Since 1996 she has dedicated her research to the development of new nanostructured sensors for food analysis and their use in electronic noses and tongues, work which is carried out through public funding and in collaboration with the food industry (15 projects funded by companies in the last 5 years).

This novel concept of sensors modified with electrocatalytic nanomaterials has enabled him to publish more than 170 papers in prestigious indexed journals, which have been widely cited by the international scientific community.

She is the author of 14 books or book chapters and 3 patents and has given more than 30 lectures at international conferences. She has also supervised or co-directed 11 doctoral theses, 3 of them with extraordinary prizes.

Visiting professor at the universities of Pisa, Firenze and Lecce (Italy), Metz and Clermont-Ferrand (France) and at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Brazil), where she collaborates in teaching and research, María Luz Rodríguez Méndez is also coordinator of the interuniversity Master in Nanoscience and Molecular Nanotechnology at UVa and has been founder and first director of the Chair Brazil-University of Valladolid.

She is also the promoter of the Castilla y León Women Researchers’ Conference, an activity that she has chaired for 10 years and whose objective is to give visibility to research carried out by women and to attract young women to research in Science and Technology.

To read the full article:
https://consejosocial.uva.es/la-catedratica-maria-luz-rodriguez-mendez-premio-consejo-social-2023-por-su-trayectoria-de-excelencia-docente-e-investigadora/

The Hypatias project, promoted by the equality unit of the University of Valladolid, aims to give visibility to women with an impact in their fields of work. To know what roles they play, what social and personal challenges they have achieved and what barriers they have encountered to reach the position they are in now. The importance of giving visibility to women in fields that historically and socially have a differentiated masculine character, also trying to encourage the rest of women, in our case, belonging to the university community either as students or professionals, to follow their dreams and set out to achieve goals that perhaps they believe impossible because they are women. The visibility of these refuted women will generate a space for dialogue and knowledge in order to empower the female collective.

Mª Luz Rodríguez Méndez, Inorganic Chemistry Full Professor at the Industrial Engineering School of the University of Valladolid and director of the UVaSens research group, was selected to be interviewed by Cristina González Pedraz: PhD in Journalism. Journalist at the DiCYT-Fundación 3CIN Agency.

https://rsu.uva.es/videoteca-hypatias/

The “7th world congress of the Digital Olfaction Society (DOS)”, organized by the Digital Olfaction Society, will be held on November 29-30 in Tokyo (Japan) in face-to-face and online mode. The aim of this congress is to establish the international link related to digital olfaction among a variety of fields such as biology, medicine, computer science, electronics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, psychology, art, etc.

The UVaSens director, Mª Luz Rodríguez Méndez has been invited to give a lecture entitled: Electronic Noses and Tongues for Food Processing.

This event is a great opportunity to share innovations in the world of digital olfaction with players in this particular field.

www.digital-olfaction.com