Professor Heather Smyth is a flavour chemist and sensory scientist who has been working with premium food and beverage products for more than 20 years.
Heather has a background in wine flavour chemistry, giving her strong expertise in understanding consumer enjoyment of foods and beverages in terms of sensory properties, composition and structure. She has a special interest in describing and articulating food quality, understanding regional flavours of locally grown produce, and modelling food flavour and textural properties using instrumental measurements.
Heather also specialises in researching how human physiology, such as saliva and chewing behaviour, can impact sensory perception and therefore food choice.
Her projects span specialty coffee, beer, wine, native plant foods, cocoa, meat and seafood, tropical fruits, honey, cereals, dairy products, plant-based and snack foods. Heather collaborates broadly with food companies and producers to improve eating quality through genetics, breeding, production factors, processing, manufacturing and formulation, supporting provenance and branding.
Key capabilities
Food and beverage science
Flavour chemistry
Sensory science
Consumer evaluation