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孙大文 Da-Wen Sun
Da-Wen Sun
Born	Chaozhou, China
Occupation(s)	Professor, Food Engineer

Sun Dawen (simplified Chinese: 孙大文; traditional Chinese: 孫大文; pinyin: Sūn Dàwén; Jyutping: Syun1 Daai6 Man6; ), known as Da-Wen Sun, is an academic and researcher in food engineering, and a member of Royal Irish Academy, the highest academic honour in Ireland.

Biography

Sun was born in Chaozhou, Guangdong, China. He received a first class BSc Honours and MSc in Mechanical Engineering, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering in China. He was appointed College Lecturer at National University of Ireland, Dublin (University College Dublin) in 1995, and was then Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and full Professor. Sun is now Professor and Director of the Food Refrigeration and Computerised Food Technology Research Group in University College Dublin. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Agricultural Engineers. He is also a member of CIGR Executive Board and Honorary Vice-President of CIGR, Editor-in-Chief of Food and Bioprocess Technology – an International Journal (Springer), Series Editor of Contemporary Food Engineering book series (CRC Press / Taylor & Francis), former Editor of Journal of Food Engineering (Elsevier), and editorial board member for Journal of Food Engineering (Elsevier), Journal of Food Process Engineering (Blackwell), Sensing and Instrumentation for Food Quality and Safety (Springer) and Czech Journal of Food Sciences. He is also a Chartered Engineer registered in the UK Engineering Council.

Academic career

Sun is an internationally recognized figure for his leadership in food engineering research and education. His main research activities include cooling, drying and refrigeration processes and systems, quality and safety of food products, bioprocess simulation and optimisation, and computer vision technology. Especially, his innovative studies on vacuum cooling of cooked meats, pizza quality inspection by computer vision, and edible films for shelf-life extension of fruit and vegetables have been widely reported in national and international media. Results of his work have been published in over 200 peer reviewed journal papers and more than 200 conference papers.

As a leading educator in food engineering, Sun has significantly contributed to the field. He has been conferred adjunct/ visiting/ consulting professorships from ten top universities in China including Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Harbin Institute of Technology, China Agricultural University, South China University of Technology, Southern Yangtze University, and so on. In recognition of his significant contribution to food engineering worldwide and for his outstanding leadership in the field, the International Commission of Agricultural Engineering (CIGR) awarded him the CIGR Merit Award in 2000 and again in 2006, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) based in the UK named him "Food Engineer of the Year 2004", in 2008 he was awarded CIGR Recognition Award in honour of his distinguished achievements as the top one percent of Agricultural Engineering scientists in the world. According to Thomson Scientific's Essential Science Indicators (ESI) updated as of 1 July 2009 to cover an 10-year plus four-month period (1 January 1999 - 30 April 2009), a total of 2,391 scientists are among the top one percent of the most cited scientists in the category of Agriculture Sciences (ISI Web of Science), and Sun is at the top of the list with his ranking of 36.

Honours and awards

He has also received numerous awards for teaching and research excellence, including the President’s Research Fellowship, and twice receiving the President’s Research Award of University College Dublin.

CIGR Recognition Award, 2008, by CIGR (International Commission of Agricultural Engineering)
AFST(I) Fellow Award, 2007, by Association of Food Scientists and Technologists (India)
CIGR Merit Award, 2006, by CIGR (International Commission of Agricultural Engineering)
President's Research Fellowship, 2004/2005, by University College Dublin
Food Engineer of the Year Award, 2004, by The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, UK
CIGR Merit Award, 2000, by CIGR (International Commission of Agricultural Engineering)
President's Research Award, 2000/2001, by University College Dublin
President's Research Award, 1998/1999, by University College Dublin
Who's Who in Science and Engineering, 2000 -
Who’s Who in the World, 1999 -

Research contribution

The research conducted by Sun and his research team is an important component in Food Process Engineering. The research has attracted the attention of quality publications including the prestigious New Scientist. Their 2001 issue (vol 172, issue 2321, 15 Dec, p 24) focused on the potential of edible food coatings to extend the shelf life of fruit and vegetables. A soya-based coating had already been used to preserve kiwi fruit for 37 days without any sign of rotting. The fruit normally lasts just a fortnight. The coating does much the same job as packaging, only better, according to Sun’s collaborator Shiying Xu, a food scientist at the Wuxi University of Light Industry in China. "Our film can inhibit gas exchange, control respiration rate, decrease nutrient loss, reduce evaporation and prevent the micro-organism growth that causes rotting," she explains. To protect a piece of fruit, you dip it in a solution of the coating, which dries to form a thin, transparent film. Although people usually peel kiwi fruit, the coating has to be edible because chemicals from it could migrate through the fruit's skin. The coating is a mixture of soya protein, a fatty acid called stearic acid, and pullulan—a sugary carbohydrate which is produced by a fungus and which forms sticky films. Xu says the coating should also work for apples, tomatoes and peppers, but the relative amounts of each constituent would have to be changed for each type of fruit, and that could make it expensive.

Sun says it's hard to tell just how long the coating would preserve other types of fruit, since they all have such varied shelf-lives. Citrus fruits, for example, can last months before rotting—and that's without the coating. Like the supercool substitute for menthol, the fruit-saving film will need to go through rigorous tests before it can be approved for commercial use, says Britain's Food Standards Agency.

In 2002 the New Scientist focused on spotting a perfect pizza (vol 176, issue 2373, 14 Dec, p 9). Lamenting the "inaccuracy and subjectivity" of quality controllers in pizza factories, Sun and Tadhg Brosnan suggested that the task demanded a more rigorous mathematical approach best done by a machine. They have turned to fuzzy logic and designed algorithms that can analyze snapshots of pizzas from digital cameras and automatically pick out rejects - the ones that just don't look tasty enough. In two papers in the Journal of Food Engineering (vol 57, p 81 and p 91), they explain how their invention can diagnose a variety of worrisome pizza ailments, including patchy sauce, sparse coverings of toppings such as mushrooms or ham, and that bane of so many would-be perfect pizzas, a base with "poor alignment".

Published works

Books by Da-Wen Sun include:

Infrared Spectroscopy for Food Quality Analysis and Control, Elsevier, 684 pp., ISBN 978-0-12-374136-3 (2009)
Infrared Spectroscopy for Food Quality Analysis and Control, Elsevier, 416 pp., ISBN 978-0-12-374136-3 (2009).
Modern Techniques for Food Authentication, Elsevier, 684 pp., ISBN 978-0-12-374085-4 (2008)
Computer Vision Technology for Food Quality Evaluation, Elsevier, 608 pp., ISBN 978-0-12-373642-0 (2008)
Computational Fluid Dynamics in Food Processing, CRC Press, 760 pp., ISBN 978-0-8493-9286-3 (2007)
Handbook of Frozen Food Processing and Packaging, CRC Press, USA, 737 pp., ISBN 978-1-57444-607-4 (2006)
Thermal Food Processing: New Technologies and Quality Issues, CRC Press, 640 pp., ISBN 978-1-57444-628-9 (2006)
Emerging Technologies for Food Processing, Elsevier, 792 pp., ISBN 978-0-12-676757-5 (2005)
Advances in Food Refrigeration, Leatherhead Publishing, 482 pp., ISBN 0-905748-83-2 (2001)
The University Structure and Curricula on Agricultural Engineering, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 233 pp., ISBN 92-5-104447-3 (2000)

References

External links

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