Pastrana Group

Pastrana’s Research Group pioneers innovative nanotechnology-based solutions to address global challenges and build a healthier, sustainable, fair, and digital food system. This group covers TRL 2 to 7 by developing new active and smart functionalities for food packaging using biomaterials, new rheological/textural properties of food ingredients, food manufacturing systems, and miniaturised devices to deliver and assess bioactivity during digestion. The research is based on scientific excellence and is market-oriented to reshape the food system of the future.
In 2024 the group reinforced the existing Soft Material characterisation Lab by incorporating unique scientific equipment to determine permeability in polymeric materials.

Research lines:

• Smart, active and edible food packaging solutions based in biomaterials and advanced coating technologies;
• Food personalisation enabled by using micro and nano-encapsulation, advanced processing/manufacturing and cellular agriculture technologies;
• Development of miniaturised, automated, and sensorised in vitro models for the assessment of food nanomaterials.