dr. M (Maaike) Nieuwland

There are two things that I find really important and would like to contribute to: good food and a better world. Luckily, with the things I love to do I can make a contribution to both of these. I love to cook, to understand the world (and more specifically food) with my chemistry background and to approach challenges with creativity.

My experience is mainly with proteins, and I love to explore the questions of customers together with them. My strength is in finding the right expertise, either in literature or with colleagues and explaining that in an understandable way to the consumer. I like to look at a topic using multiple angles.

My topics of choice are related to protein and to making the world ‘future proof’ by increasing sustainability, either by using more plant-based products or by exploiting side streams. I don’t work with test animals and only limited with meat or meat products. I understand ingredients, and will consult colleagues for details on equipment or consumer understanding. I like setting up the right experiments, and prefer to hand over the lab work to a colleague after which I like analysing the data to gain more understanding of the system.