Dr Rishi Ravindra Naik is a Chemical Engineering Graduate within the Faculty of Engineering at UNSW Sydney, undertaking a PhD in Food Science and Technology. Before deciding to further his studies in food science, Naik was a Research Executive at Raje Agro Foods Private Limited, a food processing firm in Pune, India, In 2017, he was awarded a GATE Scholarship to fund a three-year Masters of Technology in Food Engineering and Technology at the SLIET institute in Punjab. On graduating, he spent a year as visiting lecturer at KSKW College of Science in Nashik, India before a UIPA Scholarship enabled him to travel to Australia to do his doctorate at UNSW. Rishi Naik’s PhD project explored novel ways to create functional, bioactive plant proteins, using ultrasonic-assisted Maillard conjugation to modify non-traditional plant proteins with seaweeds for improved techno-functionality. His research was supervised by dairy formulations expert Professor Cordelia Selomulya and by Dr Yong Wang. A top-up PhD scholarship from Future Food Systems CRC helped fund Naik’s research for three years. He completed his PhD in November 2024. Read more about Rishi Naik and his research here.
