Professor Nesli Sözer has worked with plant-based foods for over 20 years, receiving several patents and awards. These have led to several commercial innovations and interest toward the topic.
Nesli Sözer fell in love with Finland in 2006 when she was visiting Helsinki for a conference. It might have had impact that the conference was in the middle of June, not for example in November. Besides bright summer nights and beautiful nature, also Finnish research made her impressed.
Soon after her visit, Sözer defended her PhD in Gaziantep University in her home country, Turkiye. Then post-doctoral research took her overseas for over four years. Her first postdoc period was at Rutgers University in New Jersey in 2007-2009 followed by a similar stint at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009-2011.
Sözer moved to Finland in spring 2011 and has worked at VTT ever since. “At VTT one can engage in a fruitful, versatile, and trans-disciplinary career with support in exploring new research topics. For example, I started as a Research Scientist in 2011 with interest in dietary fibres. In 2016, I became a Principal Investigator having focus on alternative proteins. In 2019, I was nominated as a Research Professor in the field of smart and sustainable food production.”, describes Sözer her career development at VTT.
Focus on affordable, tasty, and nutritious plant-based foods
Professor Sözer's research has mainly revolved around plant-based foods. While her earlier research concentrated on dietary fiber, her recent endeavors have shifted towards proteins, reflecting consumer interest in alternative protein sources. This shift is also driving a surge in innovative start-ups within the field. Consequently, the market is evolving rapidly, offering a wider array of meat and dairy alternatives than ever before, a stark contrast to just five years ago.
Sözer still remembers the press release in 2014, which attracted a lot of attention from the mainstream media. It was about fractionation of faba beans and its use in high protein bread. By then she knew that they were onto something. By today, the field has evolved significantly. “At the moment, my goal is to make plant-based food solutions more affordable, better-tasting, and nutritious. We focus on the development of hybrid foods combining technologies on plant-based and cellular agriculture. For example, this combination can close the sensory and nutritional gaps between animal and plant-based foods”, describes Sözer her current research focus.
“My work in plant-based foods will surely continue and take new directions”, ponders Sözer about the future. “For example, AI and machine learning are topics that will most likely have application areas also in food research, possibly also quantum computing. There is a lot to achieve in this field!”
Honors and Patents
Sözer has received several professional awards for her work. The first one she received already when she was a graduate student in Gaziantep University. The latest notable award she received in May 2024 at the 5th International TABADER Summit in Istanbul, Turkiye in the category of "Adding Value to the Sector". TABADER is a Turkish association for grain and legume processing technologies, storage, and analysis systems.
In addition, Sözer’s research results have brought her several patents over the years. The most recent dealt with extrusion aided plant-protein protein separation to make plant-based foods more affordable. Sözer also manages impactful research projects and forums. For example, the Healthgrain EU project, which she encountered for the first time in 2006, has since evolved into a permanent Healthgrain Forum, which Sözer chaired between 2019 and 2023. “Healthgrain Forum is a good meeting point for industry and academia, roughly half of the members are commercial entities and the rest public organizations”, tells Sözer.
As always in top-notch research, new discoveries await in future. “Being a scientist is not only about long workdays full of research, but also about seeing your research resulting in improvements in society. That’s why I am passionate about what I am doing”, finalizes Sözer.
