Mr. Roberto Serrano is a Food Scientist specializing in cereal, pseudo-cereal, legumes, pulses and bean processing. His specialization areas are in the pre-harvest/post-harvest interface to selectively meet the utility and conversion standards for food and feed manufacturing. Specific areas of interest include the development of novel food-waste recovery technologies. More specifically, harnessing distinct functional and commercial utility by developing sanitary and stabilizing processes to preserve fragile endogenous components and harnessing their nutritional and/or functional characteristics. His pioneering know-how in optimizing renewed value (upcycling) for by-products utilization is unequivocally at the top of agri-business sustainability rewarding both corporate profitability and the responsibility with our planet.
Mr. Serrano, formerly the Vice-President of Technical Services & Innovation at Grain Millers, Inc., is well known in the food industry both domestically and internationally for his innovative contributions and industrial accomplishment. These included being awarded the Food Technology Industrial Achievement Award in 2007 by The Institute of Food Technologies for work in the validation and commercialization of “cold pasteurization” of fruit and vegetable juices through Pulse Electric Field (PEF) technology. He also pioneered the use of Infra-red (IR) applications in cereals, legumes, pulses and beans by developing controlled and systematic stabilization of endogenous lipolytic enzymes, degrees of rheological modification of starches and flavor promotion.
Before joining Grain Millers Inc., Mr. Serrano was Manager of Operations for Coors Biotech Products Co., where he developed the Coors’ Food Technology Center and conducted research throughout all brewery by-product streams including spent yeast and grain, while developing high value-added ingredients including bio-flavors, high-fiber malted barley flours, flavor potentiators, low calorie/reduced fat snacks and other specialty food ingredients. Prior to Coors, Mr. Serrano transferred and licensed food and feed technology worldwide as a Technical Services and Licensing Manager for International Multifoods Corporation. Before assuming this role, he had multi-plant responsibilities (six wheat, rice and corn flour mills) for Multifoods’ subsidiary, Molinos Nacionales C.A. (MONACA) in Venezuela.
Mr. Serrano’s professional career started at Uncle Ben’s Foods, Inc, an M&M Mars wholly owned subsidiary, as a Process Research Scientist with responsibility to provide technical and cultural orientation to the company’s international investment-teams seeking to open new world markets.
Mr. Serrano received his B.S. degree in Food Science & Technology from Southeastern Louisiana University in 1973 where he was a member of the university tennis team and an M.S. in Grain Science from Kansas State University in 1976.