Professor Angel Medina Vaya

Areas of expertise

• Agrifood Systems
• Food Quality
• Food Safety

Background

Prof Medina obtained his PhD degree in Microbiology in 2007 at the University of Valencia (Spain). He was awarded the prize for the best PhD Thesis by the University of Valencia based on the novelty and quality of his research in 2008. Subsequently, he worked for almost 2 years in the food industry until he obtained a post-doctoral grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to work in the Applied Mycology Group at Cranfield University (UK) from January 2009 to August 2010. During this post-doctoral training period, he applied and was successfully granted a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (Intra-European Fellowships for Career Development)  (PIEF-GA-2009-253014) (September 2010 to August 2012). He was then part of the Applied Mycology group.

Prof. Medina has focused his research interests on the impact that environmental stress has on the functioning of fungi (mainly mycotoxigenic species), the mechanisms used for ecophysiological tolerance, and the molecular basis of secondary metabolite production, especially mycotoxins and other relevant metabolites for industrial applications. He has been developing research on ecophysiology, molecular ecology and modelling of mycotoxigenic fungi growth and toxin production for more than 18 years. Prof Medina developed a rapid screening methodology which has been utilised to screen novel compounds for efficacy against mycotoxigenic spoilage fungi and to rapidly evaluate production of secondary metabolites. He has been involved in several projects to improve the storage and increase quality of small grain cereals and other groundnuts. He has developed work to identify key secondary metabolite genes in the biosynthetic pathways of mycotoxigenic fungi. In the last few years his research has examined how to integrate and use “big data” (RNAseq, metabolomics, microarray data, growth and toxin data under interacting environmental conditions) using a systems approach. In the last five years he has led research in three main areas:  i)impact of Climate Change scenarios on food security, especially related to mycotoxins in staple food commodities, ii) Development of Decission Support Systems for storage of commodities prone to mycotoxin contamination, and ii) the development of rapid methods for detection on fungal pathogensin different stages of the food chain, mainly related with the identification of fungal and bacterial specific VOC biomarkers and using detection of gasses for the development of storage Decision Support Systems (DSS) in both durables and perishables. 

He has published 120 peer reviewed Journal papers, 14 book chapters and has an H-factor of 32 (Scopus) and 38 (Google Scholar). 

Prof Medina has 6 years of experience in the management of teaching as he was Agrifood MSc Programme Director from 2015 to 2021. He has experience in module development, QA, examinations and learning outcomes for taught modules, assignments, group project work and research project development for MSc students. He is currently an external examiner for other UK universities. In 2020, he successfully completed the PGCert in Academic Practice at Cranfield University and is now a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

In September 2020, Prof Medina was awarded the British Mycological Society Berkeley Award for his contribution to mycology as early academic. 

In August 2021, Prof Medina became the Head of the Applied Mycology Group and in June 2022 he started a new position as Director of Environment and Agrifood Theme

Current activities

Clients

Lantmannen Trust

Publications

• Articles in journals
• Books