Evelyne Timmermans

Evelyne Timmermans is a fourth-year PhD candidate at the KU Leuven Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry. From childhood, she was already very interested in nature and sciences. Her interest in science further developed when she started a Bachelor program in Bioscience Engineering. After graduating from this Bachelor studies, she started a Master program in Bioscience Engineering, specifically oriented for Food Science. Since she was very interested in micro-organisms and food production, she chose to perform her master thesis at the Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry under supervision of Prof. Christophe. M. Courtin. In this thesis, the aim was to control fructan degradation during breadmaking by substrate specificity of yeast invertases. This work resulted in a published research paper. After graduating in 2018, Evelyne started her PhD under supervision of Prof. Christophe M. Courtin and Dr. Kristof Brijs at the Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry (KU Leuven), which is well-known for its expertise on cereal constituents and their high quality research on food production and quality. During her PhD she investigated the functionality of yeast and sugar in fermented pastry production. Therefore, she focused on sugar consumption and metabolite production by yeast and the impact of the changing sugar concentrations and produced metabolites on dough and end product. Based on these results, she further investigated yeast- and sugar replacement-based strategies to reduce the sugar content in the end product. This research can be of added value in dealing with the current problem of health risks and high-sugar diets. Furthermore, she studied the fermentation dynamics of non-conventional yeast strains and explored their potential in fermented pastry products. Currently, she is finalizing the experimental work for her PhD. One paper has just been submitted to Foods, a second paper is almost ready for submission, and a third paper will follow soon.