The President’s Advisory Committee (PAC) was inaugurated at NIR-91 in Aberdeen. It exists to carry out a number of specific functions in addition to a providing general advice to the President on various issues. Foremost among the defined functions is the annual election of the Tomas Hirschfeld Award winner. The original rules governing the composition and election of PAC members were modified at a meeting in Chambersburg in 1998.
The PAC currently comprises the following:
- Immediate Past President of ICNIRS – this person acts as president of the PAC (2021-2025)
Soren Engelsen - Immediate Past President of the PAC
Tom Fearn - Convenors of the last two ICNIRS conferences 2023 & 2025
Christian Huck and Federico Marini - Executive Committee members
Dolores Perez Marin, Peter Tillmann , Tetsuya Inagaki, President elect? - Eight elected members
Elected members 2023-2027: Hoeil Chung, Douglas Fernandes Barbin, Daniel Cozzolino and Nancy Cao
Elected members 2025-2029: Andreas Niemoller, Ben Aernouts, Akifumi Ikeata and Tomasz Czaja
Tom Fearn, Immediate Past President of the PAC
Tom Fearn is Professor of Applied Statistics at University College London, UK. Before joining UCL in 1989 he worked for the Flour Milling and Baking Research Association (FMBRA) at Chorleywood, where he first began to calibrate NIR instruments (a 6-filter InfraAlyser 2.5) in 1978. His interest in NIR and in chemometrics more generally has continued to the present. Since Statistics departments generally don’t have NIR instruments his research has involved many international collaborations, most notably an ongoing link with Ana Garrido’s group at the University of Córdoba. As well as 140 or so papers his publications include joint authorship of the books Practical NIR Spectroscopy, with Osborne and Hindle, and A User Friendly Guide to Multivariate Calibration and Classification, with Næs, Isaksson and Davies. He is chemometrics editor of the Journal of Near Infrared Spectroscopy and wrote the Chemometric Space column in NIR News for 20 years. He received the Tomas Hirschfeld award for contributions to near infrared spectroscopy in 2001.
Email : tom@stats.ucl.ac.uk
Christian Huck, Conference President for the ICNIRS Conference (2023)
Christian Huck obtained his doctorate in chemistry in 1998 from the University in Innsbruck, Austria. He is Full Professor in the University of Innsbruck, where he is currently vice-head of the Institute of Analytical Chemistry and Radiochemistry and head of the Spectroscopy Unit.
He is editor-in-chief for Spectrochimica Acta A (Elsevier) and NIR news (Sage), associate editor for Journal of Near Infrared Spectroscopy (Sage) and several others known journals in the broader field of analytical chemistry. In 2023 he will be chair to host ICNIRS 2023 international conference and is the current vice-president of the Austrian Chemical Society. During the last 15 years Christian received about 15 international awards including Tomas Hirschfeld. Christian has published more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting in an h-index of 51 based on more than 9670 citations.
He is editor-in-chief for Spectrochimica Acta A (Elsevier) and NIR news (Sage), associate editor for Journal of Near Infrared Spectroscopy (Sage) and several others known journals in the broader field of analytical chemistry. In 2023 he will be chair to host ICNIRS 2023 international conference and is the current vice-president of the Austrian Chemical Society. During the last 15 years Christian received about 15 international awards including Tomas Hirschfeld. Christian has published more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting in an h-index of 51 based on more than 9670 citations.
Email: christian.w.huck@uibk.ac.at
Hoeil Chung, Elected member (2023-2027)
Hoeil Chung is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry in Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. He obtained his B.S. from Hanyang University in 1989 and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1994. Right after obtaining his Ph.D., he joined SK Energy in Korea as a research scientist and was involved in projects for developing diverse NIR spectroscopic on-line monitoring systems. In 2002, he joined Hanyang University and started his academic research in the areas of transmission/wide area coverage Raman spectroscopy for non-destructive analysis, reproducible and reusable SERS schemes to detect disease biomarkers, electrochemical synthesis of metal–alloy nanostructures and development of advanced chemometric algorithms. He has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Email :
Douglas Fernandes Barbin, Elected member (2023-2027)
Douglas Barbin holds a degree in Food Engineering from the State University of Campinas (2003), a Master’s degree in Food Engineering from the State University of Campinas (2007) and a PhD in Biosystems Engineering – University College Dublin (2012). His PhD thesis was about the application of NIR hyperspectral imaging to food products. He held a post-doctorate at the State University of Londrina (UEL), and at the Federal Technological University of Paraná (UTFPR), in the application of NIR spectroscopy for food analysis. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor at the Faculty of Food Engineering (FEA) at Unicamp. He was coordinator of the Graduate Program in Food Engineering (2018-2022), and General Coordinator of Graduate Studies (2020-2022) at FEA/Unicamp. He has experience in the area of Food Science and Technology, with emphasis on Food Engineering, working mainly on the following subjects: food process engineering, NIR spectroscopy, computerized systems in food processing, chemometrics, computer vision.
Email :
Daniel Cozzolino, Elected member (2023-2027)
Daniel Cozzolino is an Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow with the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI, University of Queensland). He has worked in several positions including Associate Professor in Food Chemistry (RMIT University), Head of Agriculture (CQUniversity), Senior Research Fellow Barley Breeding (University of Adelaide, Adelaide), Team Leader Rapid Analytical Group (The Australian Wine Research Institute, Adelaide), Head of Animal Nutrition (INIA La Estanzuela, Uruguay). His research focusses on the application of chemometric and spectroscopic methods (e.g. NIR, MIR, hyperspectral) in a wide range of fields. He has published more than 550 peer-review articles and book chapters (h index 70). He was presented in 2013 with the Hirschfeld Award by the International Council of Near Infrared Spectroscopy for his outstanding contributions on the field of NIR spectroscopy. He ranked 94 in Australia and 3665 in the world as best-Chemistry-Scientist 2023 (Research.com).
Email :
Nancy Cao, Elected member (2023-2027)
Dr. Cao is an accomplished Instrumentation Manager and Data Scientist with a specialization in Near-Infrared (NIR) Spectroscopy at Ardent Mills, US. With a robust engineering background and extensive hands-on experience, Dr. Cao has effectively managed projects, designed cutting-edge NIR spectroscopic systems, and led cross-functional teams to integrate spectroscopic solutions into diverse applications. Dr. Cao’s ability to bridge complex scientific concepts with practical insights, coupled with a commitment to staying abreast of the latest advancements, has consistently driven innovation in the analytical instrumentation landscape. She’s eager to continue contributing her expertise to the field and collaborating with like-minded professionals.
Email : nanningcao@gmail.com
Andreas Niemoller, Elected member (2025-2029)
Email : andreas.niemoeller@bruker.com
Ben Arnouts, Elected member (2025-2029)
Email : ben.aernouts@kuleuven.be
Akifumi Ikeata, Elected member (2025-2029)
Email : ikehata@affrc.go.jp
Tomasz Czaja, Elected member (2025-2029)
Email : tomasz.czaja@food.ku.dk
Updated : 12 June 2025