Rishi Ravindra Naik is a Chemical Engineering student 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 is exploring 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 is being supervised by dairy formulations expert Professor Cordelia Selomulya and by Dr Yong Wang. A top-up PhD scholarship from the CRC is helping fund Naik’s research for three years. He is due to complete his PhD in January 2025. Read more about Rishi Naik and his research here.