Dr. Wonnop Visessaguan, BIOTEC Executive Director, was honored with the 2020 Outstanding Scientist Award at the press conference announcing the recipients of 2020 Outstanding Scientist and Young Scientist awards. Hosted by the Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Technology under the Patronage of His Majesty the King, the press conference was presided over by Prof. Dr. Anek Laothamatas, Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation.
Dr. Wonnop was recognized for his scientific achievements in the field of food science and technology. His expertise, accumulated over 20 year of conducting fundamental and applied research, lies in food chemistry, specializing in protein and enzyme, and applications of microbial biotechnology to offer solutions to the production and food safety aspects in Thai food industry. Dr. Wonnop has over 250 publications in international journals, 32 IP applications and nine technologies successfully transferred to the industry, including accelerated fermentation process for fish sauce production using enzyme, starter culture technology for commercial production of pickled mustard green, fermentation process for pentosanase production for animal feed enzyme, one-step fermentation process for fruit vinegar and food and feed preservative agent eLysozyme™ derived from egg white protein. His work provides innovative solutions to enhance the competitiveness of Thai food industry, leading to the establishment of new enterprises and a number of novel bioproducts and resulting in an economic impact of 1.8 billion THB.
Other award recipients include Prof. Dr. Suttichai Assabumrungrat of Chulalongkorn University receiving the Outstanding Scientist Award for his work on multifunctional reactor and process intensification for chemical, petrochemical and biorefinery industries, as well as Dr. Pichaya Pattanasattayavong of Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Taweetham Limpanuparb of Mahidol University for the 2020 Young Scientist Awards.
