Laura Otero García

Laura Otero received her PhD in Agricultural Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid in 1999. Her PhD thesis ‘Characterization of high-pressure shift freezing in foods’ was carried out at Instituto del Frío (CSIC) and was distinguished with the Extraordinary PhD Award. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Applied Physics (CSIC) and worked on the development of gas sensors for aroma detection in food. Then, she completed another postdoctoral fellowship in process modelling with finite element method at the Faculty of Mathematical Science of Complutense University of Madrid. After these post-doctoral stays, she returned to the Instituto del Frío, first with a I3P work contract and, then, with a Ramón y Cajal contract. Her work was focused on high-pressure food processing, including different aspects such as the determination of thermophysical properties under pressure, modeling and simulation of different high-pressure processes, characterization of high-pressure assisted freezing, and evaluation of pressure induced effects on foods. Since 2010, she has a permanent position as Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Food Science, Technology, and Nutrition (ICTAN, CSIC). At present, her research interests are focused on the characterization of innovative technologies for food preservation. In particular, she is interested in two new technologies: hyperbaric storage and electromagnetic freezing. Her studies have shown that storage under pressure, even at room temperature, can significantly extend the shelf-life of foods and, now, her efforts are aimed at assessing the pressure-temperature effects on food quality degradation kinetics. Moreover, she also investigates the effects of magnetic fields on freezing with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of frozen food.