Xiumin Chen MSc, PhD

Dr. Xiumin Chen graduated from Beijing University of Chemical Technology in 1997 with a major in biochemical engineering. She worked for two years in a bioengineering company to develop PCR diagnostic kits before she continued her master’s study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Process Engineering, where she studied the anti-diabetic effects of Amorphophallus konjac oligosaccharide and chromium???complex. She obtained PhD degree in Food Science at the University of British Columbia, where her research focuses on the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory Maillard reaction products produced during the heat processing of foods. She continued working as a postdoc and sessional lecturer at UBC.

Currently, she is a research associate at UBC, Food, Nutrition, and Health. Her research areas include chemical and functional changes of heat-processed food, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory bioactive components from food, and bioavailability of functional components. She has extended experiences in the isolation and characterization of bioactive components from various foods and plants, such as orange peel, blueberry, cranberry, and coffee leaf, and studied antioxidant and anti-inflammatory mechanisms, especially on intestinal inflammation. She has published 21 peer-reviewed papers, many of which were published in top journals in the field of food science, such as Food Chemistry, Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, and Food Research International.