Innovation Committee Projects

Updating!

Alberto Palacios

With over 30 years of experience in different companies, organizations and startups (Arte y Cera SL, 4One Digital Pathfinders, Agend.it, IconCo, Farmidable, Sustainable Startup & Co, .Begana Foods Lab …). “I can say that there is nothing more comfortable than doing what you want aligned with your life purpose, so apart from promoting projects that develop entrepreneurship from innovation, impact and sustainability, I participate as an independent advisor/advisor to people, startups, organizations and companies to accompany them in creating a better world”.

Alok Nandi
Architempo + Spread Design

Alok b. Nandi is busy with innovation, strategy, interaction design and explores hybrid creative contexts via Architempo & Spread Design. He is dealing with storytelling in multiple media, space and technologies, from high-tech interactive installations to low-tech mise-en-scène. His previous professional experiences include a.o. brand and advertising (P&G – Procter & Gamble), film production, exhibition design and new media in publishing (Casterman – publisher of a.o. Tintin, groupe Flammarion). Alok Nandi is a frequent speaker at international conferences and events (incl. PechaKucha Tokyo, TEDx Flanders). In parallel, he launched IxDA and PechaKucha Brussels. Alok Nandi chaired Interaction14 in Amsterdam and served on the IxDA Board of Directors, a.o. as President (Feb.2018-Feb.2020). Alok Nandi is professor of design & innovation at Institut Paul Bocuse, hospitality-culinary, founded by chef Paul Bocuse, 3* Michelin, Lyon.

Antonio Barrera
Singular Foods + The Fork Organization

Former Creative Director of Telefónica and Grupo Zed. In the 1990s, he founded pioneering software design companies like Atlántida. In the 1920s, strategic design and technology companies such as Weareplay and Mobee Factory. He has worked for Sony Music, Doctors Without Borders, Endesa, Paramount Channel, Universal Music, BBVA, Bankinter, Mapfre, Renfe, Spanair, Camper, Carrefour, and Visa. In 2019, he created the Food Design Festival, one of the first festivals dedicated to design and Food. In 2021, he founded Singular Foods, a research & food design lab to promote food innovation and products and services for the value chain of the food system and an incubator of new experiences around the new universal language of Food.

Àurea Rodríguez
Eurecat Tarragona

Àurea Rodríguez, Managing Director Eurecat Tarragona
Her professional career has always been related to technology, innovation and bussines. She has been Director of Innovation at ACCIÓ (the Agency for Business Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia) and part of the boards of main research centers and clusters in Catalonia as Eurecat, LEITAT, CVC, I2Cat, the Food and Nutrition Cluster and the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation, among others. She is currently the managing director of Eurecat in Tarragona and head of the corporate development unit, mentor, founder and member of the board of several startups, including the company QGenomics, Talentea and the School of Design ESDI.

Clara Bartra Curominas
Forward Fooding

With a degree in Economy and Business Sciences  (UB, AMP ESADE) , Clara has a large expertise in corporate innovation, with more than 20 years developing the positions of Marketing Director, Strategic Marketing, Chief  Innovation Officer and Growth Center Director in the multinational GB Foods, a FMCG company from where she has created the Open Innovation organization and led the innovation agenda with several transformational projects. Passionate about food and convinced about the power of change-makers to build brighter futures, she is currently supporting  food innovators and startup entrepreneurs as Advisor, Lecturer (professor  in EAE Business School), Business Angel (associate member of WA4STEAM), and Ecosystem connector (GM of the Food Tech hub in Barcelona, by Forward Fooding).

Danielle Wilde
Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden and SDU Denmark.

Danielle Wilde is professor of design for sustainability at Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden; runs FoodLab, and is local coordinator and WP lead on the H2020/Food2030 FUSILLI project, at the University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg. Wilde’s research and teaching use food to raise questions around the social, ecological and material sustainability of human action, and the role of design therein; to examine how embodied engagement with the materiality of the world can assist people in thinking in new ways; develop new possibilities for future action, and fortoday—alternative responses to challenges we face, be they planetary in scale or focused on the nature within us. Wildeuses performative and probiotic methods, participatory and speculative research through design, to open up new ways of thinking, through moving, making and doing; and infrastructure new roles for design in the twenty-first century, through biodesign, designing with food and other living things.

Eduard Bosch
Feelcook

Eduard Bosch was born on April 8, 1970 in Girona.
He studied cooking at the School of Hospitality and Tourism in Sant Narcís, Girona, “I was typical to a lousy student, but I was very good at practical and theoretical cooking subjects”. In the summer of 1988, I did an internship at El Bulli through the hospitality school, and curiously, it was one of the last places where there were places, the rest of the restaurants and hotels paid for internships and were the first places where students wanted to go, that summer was a revelation in both the bases of cooking, organization and discipline learned so far. In 1990 I joined the staff until the year 2000, during which time I trained as a kitchen professional, in very demanding quality standards, which have marked my way of working until today. In the year 2000, I joined the Bulli BCN workshop where I carried out consulting tasks in different projects, and where I began to relate and collaborate with diverse teams of professionals, advertising agencies, graphic designers, industrial designers, interior designers, architects, stylists, photographers, business management, teaching, art, suppliers, producers, etc. Some of the projects I collaborated with were El Bulli hotel, Lavazza, El Bulli Catering, Caesar’s Palace Ciudad Real. In 2009 I created my own consulting company where I could alternate all kinds of projects and levels, from hotels to restaurants and the food industry. Since 2009 I have been collaborating with the creative kitchen part of the Celler de Can Roca. This has allowed me to know the operation of two restaurants that have been no. 1 of the world from different perspectives and functions, with the same goal and result.

Jordi Ballester
LET IT OUT Food Creativity

Jordi Ballester
PhD in Plant genetics
25 years’ experience in plant biotechnology and seed business.
Founder of Let it Out Food Creativity and Ivoro Venture
Tomato Designer ad Investor in Plant Bases StartUps

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Julia Kunkel
Food Design Lab Director L’École de Design Nantes Atlantique

Julia Kunkel is designer from Berlin, originally trained in process design at the University Of Fine Arts Berlin. She worked for 17 years for major players in the food industry, product design and transport. As an expert in global branding and CMF, she wishes to pass on her love of food design, her in-depth knowledge of branding, trends and the industrial world to students. Julia Kunkel believes in sustainable food, respectful of the world and mankind, committed and in tune with our contemporary lifestyles. She is leading the interdisciplinary master in design of the Food Design Lab at L’École de design Nantes Atlantique since December 2020. Born in Berlin. Living in Nantes since 2021.

Paola Sarcina
Cerealia

Born in Rome, she graduated in modern literature and musicology at the University Tor Vergata of Rome (110/110). For thirty years she has been dealing with the management and communication for performing arts and cultural promotion. In this context she has worked for various national and international bodies and organizations. She is publicist and professor of project management and cultural communication; contract professor in classical theatre at the Pontifician Salesiana University in Rome. She also gained significant experience as opera singer and performer, playwriter and theater director. Founder and president of the cultural association Music Theater International - M.Th.I., she is the creator and director of the Cerealia international festival (11 editions), awarded by the EFFE LABEL of EFA (since 2015) and by the Medal of the President of the Italian Republic (since 2017). She was appointed by the MAECI to represent Italy in the ALF Advisory Council (2018-2021). Member of the following organizations: Interuniversity Observatory on Gender, Equality and Equal Opportunities Studies; INSOR- Istituto Nazionale di Sociologia Rurale; Citizens Take Over Europe (CTOE) coalition. Official partner with M.Th.I. of the New European Bauhaus – NEB . Actually she is consultat for the MIC on the PNRR (contract with ALES spa).

Pedro Alvarez
IVORO + The Fork Organization

Pedro Alvarez is co-founder and CEO of ivoro, food innovation hub based in Madrid, where he advises food companies and startups to accelerate innovation, become more competitive and grow with profitability and sustainability. Pedro is a venture builder and early stage investor in agrifood, innovative CPG and Foodtech in Spain, Israel and USA, and also shares deal flow with different investment and corporate venturing funds interested in these areas. He is part of the #EUeic jury team for the EIC Accelerator Pilot acceleration program in Brussels and its ambassador for Spain. Mentor for eit food, CSIC and UAM’s Emprende program. Drives the Spanish and European #Foodtech ecosystem with various initiatives.

Sergio Gil
Associate professor at Mondragon Unibersitatea (Faculty of Gastronomic Sciences Basque Culinary Center), at the University of Barcelona (CETT) and at the University of Cadiz.

Degree in Contemporary History and Social and Cultural Anthropology, with various postgraduate degrees in Archeology and an official master’s degree in Cultural Ethnography at the University of Barcelona. In 2015 he proposed the term “Gastrology” to define a subfield of social and cultural anthropology that identifies empirical research and theoretical production on behaviors, reactions and cultural representations of individuals in the context of restoration.
Currently, he presided over the Sustainable Restaurants Foundation and runs three research teams in Barcelona, Madrid and San Sebastián that implement the concepts of Gastropology in haute cuisine and haute gastronomy.
Associate professor at Mondragon Unibersitatea (Faculty of Gastronomic Sciences Basque Culinary Center), at the University of Barcelona (CETT) and at the University of Cadiz. He is part of the GRECS, Research Group on Social Exclusion and Control of the University of Barcelona. Responsible of CUBIK HUB Barcelona 2020 and Summit Madrid 2021 projects.

Xano Saguer i Gregori
The Academy, the Restaurant and the Bakery of Çuina.

Xano Saguer i Gregori, co-creator of MÉTODO ESPAISUCRE, is a new way of understanding gastronomy, the only creative gastronomic system that exists. The first and only dessert restaurant in the world was inaugurated in February 2000 in Barcelona, ​​together with the Espaisucre restaurant dessert school. In 2007 he founded the most important international restaurant dessert contest that exists to date, “The best restaurant dessert”. Saguer, claims the restaurant dessert as an element with its own personality and codes, where the result, a sum of technique and experience, blurs without fanfare the limits that separate the concepts of sweet and savoury. He conceives pastry as continuous training at a technical and taste level, always based on an innovative attitude, but at the same time respecting tradition, understood as an essential ingredient to advance. Since 2018, he has collaborated with Mariana Eidler in the creation of the Food Design program for designers and chefs for Elisava, managing to propose systemic projects that demonstrate that Food Design is an agent of change. In August 2020, together with his current partner Fernanda Prado, he moved to Mexico City to launch his current and largest project. Çuina (Culinary Innovation Academy). A multidisciplinary gastronomic space in which gastronomy, pedagogy and culture coexist in a wonderful Porfirian property from 1900 in the La Roma neighbourhood. Three different activities were orchestrated by Fernanda and Xano. The Academy, the Restaurant and the Bakery of Çuina. Throughout his culinary career, Chef Saguer has received numerous awards and prizes such as the “REVELATION TEAM, BEST PROMOTION” Award at the 8th Pastry World Cup 2003, the award for the best dessert of the year (Gourmets Club Magazine), the award for the best sweet experience of 2013 in Mexico (Travel & Leisure), ranked 1st in its category.